Three equipment suppliers' order books are filling faster than the generators they serve

Petronet commissioned the 5 MMTPA unit at Dahej two months ahead of schedule, which brought the nameplate capacity to 22.5 MMTPA

On 31 March 2026 Petronet LNG put into operation an expansion of its regasification capacity at Dahej equivalent to five million tonnes per year, the terminal's nameplate capacity thus rising from 17.5 to 22.5 million tonnes per year, the work being completed two months earlier than the schedule which had been approved by the board. Expenditure on capital during the year amounted to ₹2,732 crore as compared with ₹1,584.28 crore the previous year.

It is uncommon for an LNG terminal expansion to be finished ahead of schedule, and what is noteworthy is the terminal's performance during the construction phase. The amount of LNG handled by Dahej fell from 16.91 to 16.09 million tonnes per year, its output declined from 875.78 to 832.91 trillion British thermal units, and the number of ships it discharged decreased from 258 to 247. The level of utilisation also fell from 96.6 to 91.9 per cent.

In one year the company increased its capacity by 29 per cent even though the volumes were falling. It should be noted that the figure of 91.9 per cent is based on the previous nameplate capacity of 17.5 million tonnes, not the new one; on the new base the same level of throughput is equivalent to about 72 per cent, and that figure is ours.

In the forward book, the commitment for the supply chain is recorded. The third jetty is approximately 70 per cent completed at an estimated cost of ₹2,013 crore and is targeted for fiscal year 2027-28. The petrochemical complex at Dahej is 38.6 per cent complete against a budget of ₹20,685 crore, with ₹13,346 crore having been committed. The five million tonne land-based terminal at Gopalpur has a cost of ₹6,354.80 crore, amounting to ₹1,271 crore per million tonne of capacity and representing the cleanest unit benchmark in this edition. A terminal which is currently operating at 72 per cent of its new nameplate capacity still has the possibility of increasing its output, and regasification prices also have scope to be adjusted accordingly.

Source and reference: Petronet LNG, Annual Report FY2025-26.

Premier Energies has a module capacity of 11.1 GW and a cell capacity of 3.6 GW, the difference being due to imports

7.5 gigawatts: that is the difference between the capacity that Premier Energies can assemble and the capacity it can actually produce. For the financial year 2025-26 the company increased its module capacity from 5.1 to 11.1 gigawatts and its cell capacity from 2.0 to 3.6, which means the gap between the two capacities grew rather than shrinking. That figure is calculated by us, based on the four figures provided by the company.

The output was based on capacity. In the current year, Premier produced 3,570 MW of modules compared with 2,431 MW the previous year and 2,268 MW of cells compared with 1,611 MW. Revenue increased from ₹66,521 million to ₹80,259 million and profit after tax amounted to ₹15,097 million. Two years earlier, in FY2024, cell production had been 769 MW.

The upstream sector is the one in which money is currently being directed, since it is the part that determines the outcome. At the Naidupeta facility in Andhra Pradesh, there is planned capacity of 10 gigawatts for ingot and wafer production together with 7 gigawatts for TOPCon cell production, and the company states that the project is on schedule. The ingot and wafer stage is what decides whether a module manufactured in India is actually made there or merely assembled there. According to the company's own report, China has about 85 per cent of the global solar manufacturing capacity and 95 per cent of wafer production.

A neighbouring buying operation is part of a separate supply chain. Premier has acquired 51 per cent of Transcon Industries, which will result in an operational transformer capacity of 6.75 GVA together with an additional 10 GVA extra high voltage facility capable of reaching 765 kV, with this facility due to be completed in the third quarter of 2026. By 2028 a 12 GWh containerised battery plant is planned and an aluminium frame plant with an annual capacity of 18,000 tonnes is currently being constructed for use by the company itself.

Source and reference: Premier Energies, Annual Report FY2025-26.

Nothing qualified this week

Since none of the live tenders, consultations, or compliance deadlines in India for this slot met the required standard, the slot is left empty rather than being filled.

IGL added 70 CNG stations and grew compression capacity four times faster than volume

129.81 lakh kilograms per day. This is the total compressed natural gas compression capacity of Indraprastha Gas Limited as of 31 March 2026, an increase from 109.44 lakh kilograms the year before. In order to achieve this, the company put into operation 70 new stations so that the total number would become 1,024, increased the capacity at nine additional stations, and changed 23 of its daughter booster stations to online supply.

The change in the arithmetic lies in the following figures: CNG sales volume rose by 4.13 per cent on the previous year, rising from 2,432.50 to 2,532.94 million standard cubic metres; compression capacity also increased by 18.6 per cent, this second percentage being our calculation based on the two figures given by the company.

Capacity increased more than four times faster than volume. In the case of a distributor adding seventy stations, the obvious conclusion is that it is trying to meet demand which it currently cannot serve. The figure for volume shows that demand has only increased moderately. The fact is that the constraint which has been removed was not the supply of gas but the queue time, and that is an inference rather than a stated fact.

If the situation is correct, then the inference has commercial importance since queue time is the main barrier to the conversion of commercial fleets and it is the fleet operators who are responsible for the volume involved. The other parts of the project showed the same pattern: the steel pipeline increased from 2,347 to 2,602 kilometres, medium density polyethylene rose from 27,399 to 29,734, and there were 3.70 lakh new domestic connections, with a capital expenditure of ₹1,120 crore.

Source and reference: Indraprastha Gas Limited, Annual Report FY2025-26.

Three equipment suppliers' order books are filling faster than the generators they serve

The amounts are ₹15,719 crore, ₹29,555 crore and ₹11,813 crore; there are three audited disclosures, three suppliers, and one difficulty for anyone who is planning a project. The total of the three books is ₹57,087 crore, and that sum is ours.

At the close of the year CG Power had a standalone order book amounting to ₹15,719 crore, an increase of 59 per cent, based on an order intake of ₹17,574 crore, which was up by 30 per cent. In the course of the year the company increased its transformer capacity from 42,400 to 74,900 MVA and approved an additional greenfield line of 45,000 MVA at a cost of ₹712 crore net of taxes, equivalent to about ₹1.58 lakh per MVA of new capacity. This figure is ours and it is the only public capital benchmark of its kind in this edition.

The order backlog at Hitachi Energy India at the end of the year reached a record high of ₹29,555.3 crore, an increase of 53.5 per cent. The company secured orders worth ₹18,456.5 crore compared with operational revenue of ₹8,147.7 crore, which means it secured 2.3 times as much in orders as it earned in revenue. At the delivery rate of last year, that backlog would take 3.6 years to complete. These two ratios are ours, having been calculated from the three figures stated by the company.

Sterling and Wilson had an unexecuted order value of ₹11,813 crore, an increase of 30 per cent, as a result of inflows amounting to ₹10,062 crore, up by 43 per cent, since they had commissioned around 4.5 GW of solar capacity during the year. None of the three is a generator; each one is a layer that a generator has to buy, and all three are filling up faster than they are emptying. The fact that a backlog is growing by 53.5 per cent while revenue is increasing by 27.6 per cent is not evidence of demand but rather a sign of a delivery issue.

Source and reference: CG Power and Industrial Solutions, Hitachi Energy India and Sterling and Wilson Renewable Energy, FY2025-26 annual results.