NEW DELHI: India is working on an incentive scheme to build more than 10 GW of domestic polysilicon manufacturing capacity, seeking to plug a critical upstream gap in the solar supply chain and reduce complete dependence on China for the key raw material, Union new and renewable energy Secretary Santosh Kumar Sarangi said.
The move would extend India’s domestic manufacturing push from modules and cells deeper into the solar value chain, where the country currently depends on imported polysilicon. The material is used to manufacture ingots and wafers, which are subsequently processed into solar cells and modules. It also has applications in semiconductor manufacturing.
“We are coming up with a support scheme for manufacturing of polysilicon in the country, and we should be able to come up with something which will support our manufacturers to dive deeper into polysilicon manufacturing,” Sarangi said at the 7th CII International Energy Conference & Exhibition in New Delhi. The government has not yet disclosed the proposed outlay or launch timeline.
India has built more than 213 GW of solar module manufacturing capacity and around 32 GW of solar cell capacity. The government expects solar cell manufacturing capacity to reach 100 GW within another year, while at least 80 GW of ingot and wafer capacity is expected by June 2028.
The proposed polysilicon support would complement the existing ₹24,000-crore production-linked incentive programme for high-efficiency solar modules. Under the existing programme, manufacturers were selected for 8.74 GW in the first tranche and 39.6 GW of fully or partially integrated capacity in the second.
The manufacturing push comes as India crossed 300 GW of non-fossil fuel-based generation capacity by end-July and remains on course towards its target of 500 GW by 2030, Sarangi said. India is now the world’s third-largest renewable energy market, he added.
Wind manufacturing has also reached 24 GW of capacity, with around 85% indigenisation, according to the secretary.
Alongside manufacturing, the government is seeking to improve the reliability and economics of renewable power. Sarangi said Solar Energy Corporation of India conducted a round-the-clock renewable energy bid on Thursday providing 90% assured power availability in every time block, with the discovered tariff at ₹5.25 per unit.
“If you look at this RTC bid, it almost matches nuclear power,” Sarangi said. Developers, he added, were confident that ₹5.25 per unit would remain an inflation-proof price for supplying electricity over 25 years.
Under the latest RTC structure, solar will account for only 50% of daytime supply, requiring developers to combine solar, wind and storage to maintain round-the-clock availability.
Sarangi said higher renewable penetration and RTC capacity could lower the average power procurement cost of distribution companies to ₹4.80 per unit from the current ₹5.20.
On regional integration, he said cross-border electricity trade would require not only transmission lines, substations and undersea cables but also compatible regulations.
“When we talk of cross-border energy trade, we are not talking merely of the hardware,” Sarangi said, stressing the importance of the regulatory “software” governing energy transmission.
He also highlighted the One Sun, One World, One Grid initiative and India’s cooperation with neighbouring countries, including Bhutan, as part of efforts to use different time zones to enable greater sharing of renewable electricity.
Source: The Financial Express
