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I've been thinking about starting chaos renegades, converting them from Cadians.

I reckon get a CCS, chaos mutant rabble with lasguns, two blobs of twenty and a Leman Russ of some flavour to start off.

What do you think?

If you are using the Imperial Guard codex rather than Imperial Armour 13 then I'd say that is a good start although a couple of things to note:

With every platoon of 20 men (minimum platoon size) you get a Platoon Command squad (5 guys)

Therefore I would recommend:

Platoon of 20 men + 1 priest
PCS with 4 flamers in chimera

10 Veterans in chimera with plasma/melta (unless you fancy painting another 25 models!)

Lord Commissar or Company Command Squad
Leman Rus (MAGNITIZE THIS!)

Personally I've been studying IA:13 avidly over the past fortnight. I have yet to play a game with renegades but I think I may be able to help out.
I strongly suggest you take Mutant Overlord and Covenant of Tzeentch on your arch demagogue. This will unlock 4 units of 3 OS chaos spawn for just 55pts each.
Of course pick your arch demagogues upgrades to suit your playstyle but I think the above is the most powerful.
Renegades have some of the strongest HS options in the game for their points and the Leman Russ squadrons seem one of the weakest of them. You can have 3 bs3 laser destroyers for 70pts. 1-4 earthshaker cannons for 55pts each. 1-4 Heavy Quad Launchers for 30pts each. 55pt wyverns in units upto 5 or griffons at 35pts. Support teams upto 6 with lascannons at bs3 under 26pts per model total or autocannons under 21pts. The russes are probably going to be better than the hydras and maybe the full basilisks (60pts more than an earthshaker and less durable), and probably on par with medusas and the colossus, but nowhere near as efficient for their points as the above listed units.
Mutants with lasguns instead of laspistol & ccw - I'd not even considered that. Good call!

I think you can only take 3 earthshaker/medusa siege gun per battery.

Correct. That should read 1-3 earthshakers. My mistake - hadn't turned over from the quad mortar page. Although if you could take 4 I would have advised against it - that'd be serious overkill lol.

On a seperate note - Opera, I've made a final renegade list to collect towards that I think is top notch. I'd just like to thank you for your input over the past couple of weeks.

You're welcome

If you are going down the mass cadian route, maybe the master of the horde is the man for you. Get a chance to respawn units that are killed.

Goes great with the warlord trait that give you vps when your units are destroyed.

If you're running Renegades & Heretics from IA:13 I can not stress enough how incredibly good artillery is for its price.

Barrage is amazing, and artillery is a lot harder to take out than vehicles (doesn't need to be 25% obscured for cover in ruins/battlements etc., doesn't suffer from penetrating hits, has more wounds than a tank has hull points etc.). I've only played a single game where my Heavy Quad Launchers didn't make their points back, and that was against a GK/SM Centstar army.I would definitely recommend artillery units over tanks in nearly every situation, and they should be easy to convert or build from third party minatures if the FW ones are out of your price range (the big artillery guns are just ridiculously priced..).

Mutant Rabble are also great for their price, but in my experience they really shine in combat with buffs. I run mine with a champion with covenant of Khorne, an enforcer with combat drugs, and a demagogue with the Zealot upgrade. You hit and wound most things on 5s, but every model has 4 attacks on the charge, re-rolling to hit and to wound. If you charge a unit of marines and manage getting just 12 mutants into combat, you should kill 7 marines on your first round of comat.

Mutant rabble struggle a lot more with LD issues than regular infantry squads, due to not getting Vox and Sigils and other handy tools to help them ignore such things, which should be kept in mind.