India awards »production-linked incentives« for 36.9 GW of annual capacity

India’s Ministry of Power has awarded a total of 140 billion rupees ($ 1.7 billion) under the Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) to build production capacity for solar modules, including polysilicon, wafers and solar cell precursors. This is expected to generate total investment of 930.4 billion rupees ($ 11.31 billion) and create total annual production capacity of 36.9 gigawatts (GW). Of this, 7.4 GW is expected to be operational by October 2024, 16.8 GW by April 2025 and 15.4 GW by April 2026. The award is tied to criteria relating to efficiency and domestic value creation, which will continue to be reviewed after the respective factories are operational.
The eleven companies selected also include US manufacturer of cadmium telluride thin-film modules First Solar Inc., which plans to commission a factory with an annual capacity of 3.4 GW in the state of Tamil Nadu in the second half of this year and does not require any upstream production stages due to its technology. The two other companies represented in this category, Indosol and Reliance, are each planning 6 GW of annual capacity as fully integrated production based on crystalline silicon, i.e. corresponding capacities for polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules.
The second category – wafers, cells, modules – includes five companies and a total of 16.8 GW of capacity, while the third category – cells and modules – includes three companies and 7.4 GW of annual capacity. India has been trying for years to build up a solar industry independent of imports, but so far with only limited success.
© PHOTON