How KADAK Evaluates a Renewable Energy Project

Why the screen looks the way it does

India crossed 300 GW of installed renewable capacity in August 2026, roughly 60% of the 500 GW non-fossil goal for 2030, and met an all-time peak demand of 270.8 GW in May 2026. Those two facts describe a market with real demand and real supply. What they do not describe is a market where every awarded megawatt gets built: Mercom reported about 10.1 GW of SECI-awarded capacity still searching for an offtaker in April 2026, and press reporting put the wider stranded pool nearer 43 GW. Our screen is designed to separate projects that will reach commercial operation from projects that merely exist on paper.

• · Growth is structural; execution is selective.
• · Awarded capacity is not contracted capacity.
• · The screen is sequential — an early failure stops the review.

Sponsor

The first filter is who controls the asset and whether they can sign. We look for a clean ownership chain, documented decision authority, a delivery record on comparable scale and technology, and an honest account of what has gone wrong on previous projects. Sponsors who can produce a board resolution, a shareholders' agreement and a signed mandate in the first week are, in our experience, the sponsors who reach financial close.

Land, interconnection and executed offtake remain the three binding execution constraints — and in 2026 offtake is the tightest of the three.

Land

Site control is examined as a legal position, not an intention. We test the title chain, the form of control (freehold, registered lease, government allotment or agreement to lease), rights-of-way for the evacuation corridor, conversion and land-use status, encumbrances, and the record of community engagement. Aggregated smallholdings in India, in particular, require a parcel-level review rather than a summary table.

Resource and yield

We rely on independent yield studies from recognised consultants, with measurement data, uncertainty bands at P50/P75/P90, long-term correction against reference datasets, and explicit treatment of soiling, wake and availability. Sponsor-produced yield estimates without an independent counterpart are treated as a marketing input, not an underwriting input.

Interconnection and evacuation

Queue position, connectivity grant, bay availability, the status of the associated transmission element and the commissioning date of the upstream network are reviewed together. This matters more in 2026 than in prior years: CTUIL's interim rolling plan projects roughly INR 3.42 trillion of interstate transmission capex to FY30, and in August 2026 CERC issued a draft proposal to extend transmission-charge waiver relief to renewable projects delayed by grid constraints — an implicit acknowledgement that network delivery is lagging generation.

• · Connectivity grant and long-term access are separate documents with separate conditions.
• · Grid delay is a schedule risk and a tariff risk simultaneously.
• · Curtailment history at the substation is diligence, not a footnote.

Permitting and clearances

Environmental clearance, forest and wildlife approvals where triggered, state pollution control consents, aviation and defence clearances for wind, local body permissions and grid code compliance are each tracked to a document, a date and a validity period. Conditions attached to approvals are read in full; a clearance with unmet conditions is not a clearance.

PPA and offtake

Offtake is the deciding variable in the current Indian market. We assess the counterparty's credit and payment history, the payment security package, tariff structure and tenor, curtailment and deemed-generation provisions, scheduling and deviation liabilities, change-in-law allocation and termination compensation. Where a project holds a Letter of Award without an executed PPA, we treat it as development-stage regardless of how advanced the rest of the file is; MNRE's May 2026 office memorandum proposing a one-time relief package for exactly that cohort confirms how large the gap became.

EPC, equipment and supply chain

Scope completeness, liquidated damages, performance guarantees, warranty tenor and the credit standing behind the warranty, module and turbine supply commitments, domestic content requirements where applicable, and the delivery schedule against the connectivity date. Equipment risk is increasingly a schedule risk rather than a price risk.

Construction, commissioning and O&M

We review the critical path against the grid and offtake milestones, the owner's engineer arrangement, the commissioning and performance-test protocol, spare-parts strategy and the long-cycle operating plan. A project schedule that does not reconcile with the transmission element's own schedule is an unreconciled schedule.

Insurance, currency, tax and legal

Construction and operational insurance placement, business interruption cover, currency exposure between capital, debt and revenue, withholding and repatriation treatment, holding-structure integrity and the enforceability of key contracts under their governing law. Cross-border capital carries structural risk that domestic sponsors frequently under-document.

Community and social licence

Local engagement history, grievance mechanisms, land compensation practice, employment commitments and the presence or absence of litigation. Social licence is a schedule variable long before it becomes a reputational one.

Sensitivities and exit

We run institutional sensitivity ranges across generation, curtailment, tariff realisation, receivable cycles, capital cost and financing terms, and we require a realistic exit route at entry — refinancing, platform sale, InvIT contribution or strategic acquisition. The 2026 market has demonstrated liquidity for de-risked operating platforms; the Sprng Energy transaction and the Fourth Partner process are current evidence. That liquidity is available to assets with clean contracts and clean records, not to assets that need explaining.