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The green power mandate
The green power mandate at Dholera describes the intent to run data centres and industry on renewable energy drawn from the Dholera Ultra-Mega Solar Park. The park has an ultimate target of 5,000 MW, roughly 5 GW, aimed at around 2030, with about 300 MW operational today and a 1,000 MW Phase-I sanctioned, the Central Electricity Authority approval reported in September 2025 and Tata Power having commissioned a 300 MW plant. This renewable backbone is why the anchor L&T Vyoma campus is described as green AI-ready. The mandate is best read as a scaling plan, since the target far exceeds current operational output.
Last checked 2026-08-11 · every figure below carries its source
What the green power mandate means
The phrase green power mandate at Dholera captures a design choice, that the region's industry and especially its data centres should be able to run on renewable electricity. The engine behind it is the Dholera Ultra-Mega Solar Park, planned as one of the large solar installations in the country. Its ultimate target is 5,000 MW, or about 5 GW, aimed at around 2030. That target is the destination, not the present reality. Today about 300 MW is operational, and a 1,000 MW Phase-I has been sanctioned, with the Central Electricity Authority approval reported in September 2025 and Tata Power having commissioned a 300 MW plant. Holding those two facts together is the key to understanding the mandate. Dholera is building toward a very large renewable capacity, but the built-out portion so far is a fraction of the goal. The point of the mandate is structural. By planning a major solar source into the region from the start, Dholera can offer incoming industry a credible path to renewable power rather than asking each operator to arrange it alone. For power-hungry facilities, that is a genuine advantage. It also means the region's clean-energy promise and its demand from large consumers will have to grow in step, which is the central tension the next few years will resolve.
The solar park build-out
The Dholera solar park is being built in stages, which is normal for an installation of this size. The published ultimate target is 5,000 MW, and the trajectory toward it runs through sanctioned phases rather than a single switch-on. A 1,000 MW Phase-I has been sanctioned, with the Central Electricity Authority approval reported in September 2025, and within the operational capacity Tata Power commissioned a 300 MW plant. The roughly 300 MW figure is the amount reported as operational today. Reading these numbers carefully avoids a common error. The 5,000 MW is a long-range target for around 2030, the 1,000 MW is a sanctioned phase, and the roughly 300 MW is what is actually generating now. Each label matters because they describe very different stages of certainty. Sanctioned means approved and heading into build, operational means producing electricity, and target means the eventual goal if everything proceeds. Staged build-out is sensible for solar because capacity can be added in blocks as demand, transmission and financing line up, rather than committing the entire investment before there are consumers to buy the output. For Dholera, the staged approach means the clean-power promise becomes more real with each phase energised, and progress is best tracked by watching operational capacity climb rather than by repeating the ultimate target.
Why data centres want renewable power
Data centres are among the most electricity-intensive buildings in modern infrastructure, and artificial intelligence has pushed that appetite higher still. AI training and inference run at high power density, meaning each rack of equipment draws far more power and produces far more heat than traditional hosting, a well-established feature of the industry. Two pressures make renewable supply attractive to operators. The first is cost and stability. Electricity is one of the largest running expenses for a data centre, so a large, predictable renewable source helps manage both the price and the exposure to fossil fuel volatility over the long operating life of a campus. The second is sustainability commitment. Many large operators and their customers have public goals to reduce the carbon footprint of their computing, and siting near renewable generation is one of the clearest ways to make progress against those goals. This is exactly the logic behind describing Dholera's anchor project, the L&T Vyoma campus, as green AI-ready. The green half of that label depends on the solar park being able to supply the campus, which is why the mandate and the data centre ambition are inseparable. It is worth keeping the honest caveat in view. A 250 MW campus alone would consume a large share of the roughly 300 MW operational today, so the renewable supply must scale substantially for the green promise to hold at data centre scale.
How the mandate connects to Dholera's growth
The green power mandate is one strand of a larger plan for Dholera as a greenfield industrial region under the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor, set up under the Gujarat Special Investment Region Act of 2009. Reliable, and ideally renewable, power is one of the three things heavy technology infrastructure needs most, alongside connectivity and, for data centres, cooling. The solar park addresses the power leg directly. The Ahmedabad to Dholera expressway, operational since 31 March 2026, and the airport under construction address connectivity and access. The nearby semiconductor fab anchors a technology cluster that clean, plentiful power helps sustain. The state has reinforced this direction with the Viksit Gujarat Data Centre Policy 2026-29, which names Dholera as its primary location for data centres, an industry whose appetite for green power is exactly what the solar park is meant to serve. The mandate should not be oversold. It rests on a target of 5,000 MW that is still years from realisation and an operational base of roughly 300 MW today. But as a strategic bet it is coherent. A region that can credibly promise renewable power at scale is positioned for the kind of computing investment that increasingly insists on it, and the pace of the solar build-out will be one of the clearest measures of whether the promise is being kept.