Solar manufacturing PLI to create 90 Gw addl capacity in India: RK Singh | So Good News

India will get more than 65 percent of its power generation from renewable energy sources by 2030, the Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy said on Monday. Ensure India has 90 Gw solar module capacity.

The minister said that India has already reached 42 per cent of non-fossil fuel (including hydropower) by 2021. “Even 65 percent cannot be underestimated. Today our sustainable capacity is 170 Gw non-fossil odd. Another 80 Gw is under construction and 250 Gw,” he said at the CII of Aatm nirbhar Bharat conference.

The Minister said that green hydrogen will support Phillips for the addition of renewable capacity.

“Each hydrogen generating unit requires 25 Giga Watt of renewable energy. With India planning to produce 35-40 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030, there will be huge demand for renewable energy,” Singh said.

The minister also said that they are considering issuing distribution licenses in renewable energy areas.

Singh said the Centre’s initiatives in solar manufacturing will ensure that India has a 90 Gw solar module manufacturing facility.

The Center will soon come out with the second phase of the solar PLI scheme worth a total of Rs 19,000 crore. “High-performing cells and modules will be incentivized. Low-performing cells and modules will be phased out. We will give the industry a window for transition,” Singh said.

Secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy; Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi said, “For PLI 2, we are confident that the tender will be issued within a week… The plan guidelines have already been issued.”

India to have 38 Gw capacity in Polysilicons by 2026; 56 Gw in Ingot and Wafers; Chaturvedi said they are looking at 70-80 Gw in cells and 90-100 Gw in modules. “Our targets are huge considering the 500 Gw plans we have by (2030) not considering the hydrogen plans. About 25-35 Gw will be installed every year. There seems to be good potential for solar generation,” Chaturvedi said.

The Union Cabinet last month approved the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) proposal of over Rs 19,500 crore for the second phase of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for manufacturing solar equipment.

This is part of the ‘National Program on High Efficiency Solar PV Modules’ to achieve giga watt (Gw) scale manufacturing capacity in high efficiency solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

In the first phase of tendering, MNRE received PLI sanction of Rs 4,500 crore and RfP for nearly 50 Gw of 10 Gw. It is Coal India; L&T Vikram Solar; It received nearly 18 bids from Megha Engineering and several new companies. The winners were Reliance New Energy; Adani Infrastructure and Shirdi Sai.

It was increased to Rs 19,500 as per the Union Budget 2022-23 to accommodate the large number of bids.

The new round of PLI will have three different schemes for different product categories; The highest share of the devolved corpus could go to end-to-end manufacturing of “polysilicon-wafers-cells-modules” (from raw material to finished product) worth Rs 12,000 crore.