'24/7 Green Power' Isn't Really 24/7

India's New ‘Rs 5.25’ Green Tariff Is ‘Round The Clock’ In Name Only

By Dev Chandrasekhar

Last week, at an industry conference in New Delhi, renewable energy secretary Santosh Kumar Sarangi announced a number that made headlines. The latest auction run by SECI (Solar Energy Corporation of India), the government company that buys renewable power in bulk, discovered a price of Rs 5.25 per unit for what is being called round-the-clock renewable energy.

Discovered is auction jargon, and for once the jargon is accurate. 

Nobody fixed this price. It emerged from a reverse auction, developers bidding against one another, each undercutting the last, until no one was willing to go lower. 

“We expected the price to be very high,” Sarangi reportedly said, “but thanks to the competitive spirit among our developers, we discovered a rate of Rs 5.25 per unit.”

The auction was for 1,000 MW, roughly the output of a large coal plant, supplied under 25-year contracts. It drew sixteen bidders, of whom seven won. The tender carries its ambition in the name: Round-the-Clock Thermal Mimic. 

A bundle of solar farms, wind farms and batteries, working together, is meant to imitate a coal-fired station, supplying steady power day and night. The government says the price should be compared with firm sources such as thermal and nuclear, and that the tender is a milestone for reliable green energy, especially for data centres.

What Does This Mean?

A fixed Rs 5.25 for 25 years is cheaper than what new coal capacity costs (recently approved coal plants are coming in at Rs 5.85 to over Rs 6 per unit, with fuel bills that rise for decades) and far cheaper than new nuclear.

Every unit bought this way is a unit whose price cannot be inflated by imported coal or a weak rupee. For consumers, this is clean power at a fair, stable price, and that is not nothing.

What it is not, yet, is a guarantee that the lights stay on. The gap between those two things is where this story lives.

The 70% Clock

The winning developers have promised to deliver, in every 15-minute slice of the day (the grid measures everything in these slices, called time blocks), a minimum share of the contracted power. But the minimum changes with the hour. 

During peak hours, the evening stretch when everyone's lights, fans and televisions come on together, they must deliver at least 90%. During the sunny hours, only 50 to 60%. During the remaining hours, the floor is 70%. 

Average that across a full day and the guaranteed supply works out to roughly 70% of round-the-clock demand. The clock is only about seven-tenths wound. For nearly a third of the promised power, the buyer has no assurance, only a hope that the weather cooperates.

In the hours the floors do not cover, the contract is deliberately quiet. Nothing in the tender obliges the developer, or SECI, to procure replacement power. SECI is an intermediary: it buys from the winners and resells back-to-back to the discoms that sign up, passing the product through as contracted. 

A developer's only liability for a shortfall is the penalty; the job of actually filling the unserved hours rests with the buying discom, which also chooses, a day in advance, which six hours of its day count as peak.

To be fair to SECI, this is sensible design rather than sleight of hand. The obligation is strongest in the evening, when the grid is desperate, and weakest at midday, when India's solar farms already produce so much that wholesale prices routinely crash. 

Nobody needs guaranteed delivery at noon. But sensible design is still a concession. This is shaped energy with a safety floor. 

It is round-the-clock only in name.

Building Wealth For A Longer Life

Longer lives. Rising costs. Market volatility. Uncertain returns.

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How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

4.57 lakh units

That is how many passenger vehicles were dispatched from companies to dealers in India in July, marking a 34.3% year-on-year jump from 3.40 lakh units in July 2025, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said on Thursday.

Overview: Two-wheeler sales rose 22.6% to 19.23 lakh units, up from 15.69 lakh units a year earlier, while three-wheeler dispatches climbed 33.4% to 92,560 units, against 69,403 units in the year-ago period.

The Lead: SIAM Director General Rajesh Menon called it the industry's strongest-ever July sales, with double-digit growth across the segments.

He said the momentum, sustained over several months, has continued as the industry heads into the festive season with expectations of strong consumer sentiment

Air India Mandates Pilot Drug Tests

Air India will begin mandatory substance testing for all pilots from Thursday, going beyond regulatory requirements after a pilot involved in a serious mid-air incident tested positive for marijuana, Reuters reported.

Catch Up Quick: The tests will screen for prohibited substances and medications and will be carried out during training sessions at the airline's Gurugram academy, post-flight at briefing centres and offices, or at locations designated by pilots' home bases. Pilots at budget arm Air India Express will also be covered.

Current rules require airlines to randomly test at least 10% of flight crew annually for psychoactive substances. "We nevertheless now feel that it is important to go further," Air India reportedly said, citing safety and passenger reassurance.

Context: The move follows an August 4 incident in which an Air India A320neo lost about 300 feet of altitude mid-flight from Phuket to Delhi. The captain reportedly tested positive for marijuana in a confirmatory test.

Who's Next at Tata Sons?

Tata Trusts has passed a resolution to set up a selection committee to find the next chairman of Tata Sons, a day after N. Chandrasekaran said he would not seek reappointment when his term ends in February 2027.

According to Business Standard, industry and Tata Group sources said the search is likely to include senior Tata executives, board members and external candidates. Among those being considered are Tata Steel CEO TV Narendran, Tata Sons CFO Saurabh Agrawal and Tata Motors MD and CEO Shailesh Chandra.

Context: Chandrasekaran was appointed in January 2017 after the board ousted Cyrus Mistry, becoming the first non-Parsi professional to lead the conglomerate.

Under his watch, group revenue nearly doubled and profit roughly tripled between 2017 and 2026. His biggest move was bringing Air India back into the Tata fold in 2022.

Critical Moment: Chandrasekaran cited the lack of board backing as the reason for stepping down. Tata Sons controls more than 30 companies, including TCS, Tata Motors and Air India.

The selection committee will now determine who leads one of India's most influential conglomerates and how it navigates what comes next.

AI Boom, US Dependence

Larsen & Toubro has secured an order worth up to Rs 15,000 crore ($1.57 billion) from US-based cloud platform Together AI to build an AI data centre in Chennai.

Catch Up Quick: L&T’s AI infrastructure arm, LTN Compute, will deploy 10,000 Nvidia B300 chips at its Vyoma.AI campus, in what the company calls India’s largest single-cluster AI infrastructure facility. The centre will support AI inference, fine-tuning and training.

Flashpoint: The deal comes as India races to build infrastructure for the AI boom. As The Core previously reported, however, much of this investment may not directly benefit Indian startups and MSMEs.

Indian data centres can capture revenues from construction, land, power and colocation. But the higher-margin layers of the AI stack remain dominated by US companies. Nvidia supplies the GPUs, while US firms capture much of the value in cloud, software and AI models.

Merchandise Trade Deficit Widens

India's merchandise trade deficit grew to $31.98 billion in July, a six-month high and wider than the $30.20 billion economists polled by Reuters had expected. It stood at $30.43 billion in June.

The West Asia war drove up oil prices and freight rates, putting fresh pressure on India's external balance and the rupee, Reuters reported.

Fast Facts: Imports rose to $76.22 billion from $70.84 billion in June, driven by electronics, gold and crude.

Electronics imports, including chips, jumped more than 44% year-on-year to $14.37 billion, while gold imports climbed nearly 5% to $4.16 billion.

Oil imports stood at $18.31 billion. On the other side, goods exports hit a record $44.24 billion in July, surpassing the previous July peak of $38.34 billion set in 2022.

The US remained India's top export destination, with shipments of $33.49 billion in April-July. About 45% of India's exports to the US remain exempt from Washington's new 10% duty introduced in July.

Forecast: Freight rates on routes from South Asia to the US and Europe have risen sharply, squeezing margins for exporters of rice, textiles, pharmaceuticals and engineering goods.

India's top exporters' body has urged the government to engage with global shipping lines over rising freight costs and container shortages, Reuters reported.

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Oil Prices Fall On Demand Concerns

On Episode 947 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to K. Ramakrishnan, Managing Director-South Asia at Worldpanel by Numerator (formerly Kantar Worldpanel) as well as Deven Choksey, market expert and Managing Director at DRChoksey FinServ.

• Oil Prices Fall On Demand Concerns, After A While, Markets Steady

• Finding The Balance Between Long Term Investments And Shareholder Return

• South Korean Markets Are Now In Bull Territory

• Rajkot Snacks Company Balaji Breaks Into Top 10 Most Chosen In-Home FMCG Brand

• An Ease Of Doing Business Lesson From The USA Which Is Processing Tariff Refunds