India preparing more than five-fold rise in financing for PLI solar production plan

• India's government is set to scale up funding for its production-linked reward (PLI) programme for solar production as it eyes exports of PV equipment.

While the scheme was initially made to allot INR 45 billion (US$ 604 million) over 5 years to back the residential development of high-efficiency PV modules, this will be increased to INR 240 billion (US$ 3.22 billion), said India's priest of brand-new and also renewable energy, RK Singh.

A request to permission extra funds for the program has been accepted in principle by the federal government, Singh informed news agency PTI, adding: "We would be exporting solar devices."

The preacher additionally revealed that India's solar module manufacturing capacity is presently 8.8 GW, while cell manufacturing ability is 2.5 GW.

Accepted last year, the PLI scheme will assign financing over five years to sustain the residential development of modules as the government intends to reduce reliance on imports. Singh said the program obtained bids for 54.5 GW of solar production capacity.

The Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) last week revealed that Jindal India Solar Energy, Shirdi Sai Electricals and also Reliance New Energy Solar have been chosen as the recipients of financing under the PLI, with each submitting bids for 4GW of making ability.

The program will certainly see transformer producer Shirdi Sai Electricals receive INR 18.75 billion (US$ 252 million), Jindal India Solar Energy INR 13.9 billion as well as Reliance New Energy Solar INR 11.9 billion over 5 years

A subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, Reliance New Energy Solar last month got module supplier REC Group and also a 40% risk in EPC as well as O&M options provider Sterling and also Wilson prior to buying German wafer technology firm NexWafe, which is intending to develop giga-scale wafer manufacturing centers in India.

Other recent solar manufacturing announcements in India consist of Emmvee authorizing a bargain to set up a 3GW cell as well as module manufacturing plant in the state of Karnataka, while Premier Energies received funding to add an extra 2GW of manufacturing capability for both cells and modules based upon mono PERC technology.

Speaking at a conference earlier in the year, Singh stated it was "undesirable" for manufacturing to be concentrated in simply one nation and that various other production bases were required "to ensure that there is no disturbance in the world supply chain".