INDIA'S SOLAR POWER

• A typical solar PV Value chain consists of first fabricating polysilicon ingots which need to be transformed into thin Si wafers that are needed to manufacture the PV mini-modules.
• The Mini-modules are then assembled into market-ready and field-deployable modules.
• India's current solar module manufacturing capacity is limited to 15 GW per year. 
• The demand-supply gap widens as we move up the value chain, for example, India only produces 3.5 GW of cells currently.
• India has no manufacturing capacity for solar wafers and polysilicon ingots and currently imports 100 per cent of silicon wafers and around 80 per cent of cells even at the current deployment levels.
• Out of the 15 GW of module manufacturing capacity, only 3-4 GW of modules is technologically competitive and worthy of deployment in Grid-based projects.
• India remains dependent on the import of solar modules for field deployment.

Government Policy

• The government has identified this gap and is rolling out various policy initiatives to push and motivate the industry to work towards self-reliance in solar manufacturing, both for cells and modules.
• Key initiatives include a 40 per cent duty on the import of modules and a 25 per cent duty on the import of cells and a PLI Scheme to support manufacturing CAPEX.
• It is mandatory to procure modules only from an approved list of manufacturers (ALMM) for projects that are connected to the state and central government Premium Grids.
• So far, only India-based manufacturers have been approved.
• This will certainly help to motivate the industry, the major challenges are related to size and technology.

Size and technology

• Most of the Indian industry is currently tuned to handling M2 wafer size, which is roughly 156 × 156 mm2.
• The global industry is already moving towards M10 and M12 sizes, which are 182 × 182 mm2 and 210 × 210 mm2 respectively.
• The bigger size has an advantage in terms of silicon cost per wafer, as this effectively means lower loss of silicon during ingot to wafer processing.
• In terms of cell technology, most of the manufacturing still uses A1-BSF technology, which can typically give efficiencies of 18-19 per cent at the cell level and 16-17 per cent at the module level.
• By contrast, cell manufacturing worldwide has moved to PERC (22-23 per cent), HJT (∼24 per cent), TOPCON (23-24 per cent) and other newer technologies yielding modules the efficiency of > 21 per cent.
• Producing more solar power for the same module size means more solar power from the same land area.
• Land, the most expensive part of solar projects, is scarce in India and the Indian industry has no choice but to move towards newer and superior technologies as part of expansion plans.

Supply of Raw Materials

• There is a huge gap on the raw material supply chain side as well.

• It is not clear how and where India will get the technology.
• Other key raw materials such as metallic pastes of silver and aluminium form the electrical contacts too are almost 100 per cent imported.
• India is more of an assembly hub than a manufacturing one and in the long term, it would be beneficial to move up the value chain by making components that could drive the price and quality of both cells and modules.
• Establishing state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities for cells, modules and raw materials that need access to technology.
•  It is unlikely that companies that have spent millions of dollars on in-house and external R&D would make it easy for India to access the latest technologies easily or at a lower cost.
• India has hardly invested in creating high-quality high-TRL technology centres such as IMEC Belgium or the Holst Centre in the Netherlands, Which can help the industry to try and cost-effectively test the technologies.
• India needs to create such industry-like centres to work on specific technology domains with clear roadmaps and deliverables for the short and long term, monitored by the right mix of specialists from industry and academia.