{"id":199400,"date":"2022-08-09T18:08:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T12:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=199400"},"modified":"2022-08-09T18:08:26","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T12:38:26","slug":"experts-explain-what-it-will-take-to-fulfill-indias-solar-power-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/experts-explain-what-it-will-take-to-fulfill-indias-solar-power-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts Explain: What it will take to fulfill India\u2019s solar power dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cExperts Explain: What it will take to fulfill India\u2019s solar power dream\u201d <\/strong>published in the Indian Express <\/b>on 9th<\/sup>\u00a0August 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Syllabus<\/strong>: GS 3 – Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc..<\/p>\n

Relevance<\/strong>: About the challenges faced by solar PV manufacturing in India.<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>: From less than 10 MW in 2010, India has added significant solar PV capacity over the past decade, achieving over 50 GW by 2022.<\/p>\n

By 2030, India is targeting about 500 GW of renewable energy deployment, out of which ~280 GW is expected from solar PV. This necessitates the deployment of nearly 30 GW of solar capacity every year until 2030.<\/p>\n

About Solar PV panels<\/h5>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The bigger size of solar wafer there is an advantage in terms of silicon cost per wafer, as this effectively means lower loss of silicon during ingot to wafer processing.<\/p>\n

What are the challenges that need to be overcome in solar PV manufacturing?<\/h5>\n

Higher Imports: <\/b>India currently does not have enough module and cell manufacturing capacity. Hence, Indian solar deployment or installation companies depend heavily on imports.<\/p>\n

India\u2019s current solar module manufacturing capacity is limited to ~15 GW per year. India only produces ~3.5 GW of cells currently. India has no manufacturing capacity for solar wafers and polysilicon ingots, and currently imports 100% of silicon wafers and around 80% of cells even at the current deployment levels.<\/p>\n

Size and technology<\/strong>: In terms of cell technology, most of the manufacturing still uses Al-BSF technology, which can typically give efficiencies of ~18-19% at the cell level and ~16-17% at the module level. By contrast, cell manufacturing worldwide has moved to other newer technologies, yielding module efficiency of >21%.<\/p>\n

Raw materials supply<\/strong>: Silicon wafer, the most expensive raw material, is not manufactured in India. More than 90% of the world\u2019s solar wafer manufacturing currently happens in China.<\/p>\n

Other key raw materials such as metallic pastes of silver and aluminium to form the electrical contacts too, are almost 100% imported. India is more of an assembly hub than a manufacturing one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read more: Semiconductors: Heroes Of The New Digital World<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Academics plus industry<\/strong>: India has hardly invested in creating high-quality high-TRL technology centres that can help the industry to try and test the technologies in a cost-effective manner. Examples of the such centres include IMEC Belgium or the Holst Centre in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

What are the government initiatives to promote solar PV panels?<\/h5>\n

Firstly<\/strong>, there is a 40% duty on the import of modules and 25% duty on the import of cells, and a PLI scheme to support manufacturing capex.<\/p>\n

Secondly<\/strong>, it is mandatory to procure modules only from an approved list of manufacturers (ALMM) for projects that are connected to state\/ central government grids; so far, only India-based manufacturers have been approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read more: <\/strong>The Global Semiconductor Shortage \u2013 Explained, pointwise<\/strong><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
What can be done?<\/h5>\n

Although India is making great progress in the deployment of solar PV modules for power generation, its path to becoming a manufacturing hub for the same requires more than just putting tax barriers and commercial incentives in the form of PLI schemes, etc.<\/p>\n

a)<\/strong> India will have to work on technology tie-ups to make the right grade of silicon for solar cell manufacturing, b)<\/strong> In 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,\u00a0c) <\/strong>India needs to create industry-like centres to work on specific technology domains with clear roadmaps and deliverables for the short and long term, d)<\/strong> Strong industry-academia collaboration in an innovative manner to start developing home-grown technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on the article\u00a0\u201cExperts Explain: What it will take to fulfill India\u2019s solar power dream\u201d published in the Indian Express on 9th\u00a0August 2022. Syllabus: GS 3 – Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.. Relevance: About the challenges faced by solar PV manufacturing in India. News: From less than 10 MW… Continue reading Experts Explain: What it will take to fulfill India\u2019s solar power dream<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[216,10500],"class_list":["post-199400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-indian-express","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}