India Renewables: 5 factors to identify winners

Renewables is a low barrier to entry business, a big reason being the viability of small size plants (unlike coal/nuclear/hydro). As the wave of new renewable listings re-emerges after a hiatus of a couple of years, we revisit our perspective on what, if any, is a differentiator in this business. We see 5 rights to win in this fragmented market: 1) Grid connectivity (most important) - a surprising leader. Given that a solar plant can be built in a year while a high voltage line takes 3 years, this is by far the biggest constraint for RE capacity addition and hence the biggest right to win in the medium term. The top 3 (Adani Green, NTPC Green and ReNew) are far ahead of peers; notably only NTPC Green has a sizable quantum coming by CY28 end, while for Adani Green most evacuation comes 2029 onwards. 2) Land availability - only 2 players (Adani and Reliance) with large land banks;