India’s solar manufacturing capacity is expanding with Make in India

The Union Ministry has approved the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme on highly efficient Solar PV modules for achieving manufacturing capacity on a Giga Watt (GW) scale. The government has approved a grant worth 19,500 crores for domestic manufacturing.

This announcement of the PLI scheme is a boon to the  solar manufacturing industry in India to form giga factories with a clear focus on manufacturing high-efficiency solar PV modules. India is a nation that has resolved not to compromise on its energy security, keeping in view the high strain on the overall global food and energy value chain due to climate change and very recent geo-political  tension in Europe/ USA and Russia/China. Upscaling the domestic capacity is quintessential for a resilient and self-sufficient India. In alignment with the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision, it has been our priority and commitment to contribute towards build-ing an Aatmanirbhar Bharat as far as India’s solar module and cell manufacturing is concerned.

The All-India solar industry association (AISIA) is committed to adding more and more solar manufacturing capacities on Indian soil to make our country an  atmanirbhar Bharat. The policies of the government of India on imposing 40 per cent BCD on imported modules/cells, PLI schemes, ALMM, and  SPECS have laid a strong foundation for domestic manufacturers to scale up capacity addition. The actual installed capacity as of September 2022 stands at 3000 MWs (almost 10,000 MWs of capacity to be approved under ALMM).

In the next six months,  another 10000 MWs of  solar domestic module manufacturing capacity will be in place, taking overall capacity to approx. 40000 MWs by 31st of March 2023. As per the available information and conducive government policies, there will be an addition of another 74,000 MWs by PLI trench 1 and 1, which will take  the total capacity to approximately 114,000 MW. The new PLI announced today will give a boost to higher capacity addition on the upstream  side of the value chain, i.e., poly silica ingots, wafers, etc. This will bring much-needed technological innovation into the realm of our very own  energy value chain.

Overall, this will move our nation towards achieving the target of becoming a de-sired global manufacturing hub for high-efficiency solar panels. Domestic solar manufacturers are operating in an environment where indigenous module production is rapidly  increasing without much demand. This brings good competition in prices  and services to give a better ROI to end customers. Higher manufacturing capacity over demand is expected to persist in the coming years.