The Indian government has announced a new incentive scheme to boost manufacturing in the solar power sector. Through this scheme, the government plans to disburse more than $600 million over the next five years.
India’s Ministry for New and Renewable Energy recently announced the guidelines for a production-linked incentives scheme for the solar equipment manufacturing sector.
Incentives will be offered to manufacturers of polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules. The Ministry will call for bids from manufacturers in order to allocate the earmarked funds.
Selection, as well as disbursement of incentives, shall be based on the capacity bid by companies, the efficiency of modules produced, and the extent of integration across the polysilicon-to-module value chain.
Companies will be required to commission their production lines within 1.5–3 years of winning the bids.
Rating agency ICRA noted that the scheme could support the development of 21 gigawatts of cell-to-module production capacity over the next five years.
This new capacity would be able to meet around 50% of India’s annual demand for modules during this period.
Reference- Mercom India, Economic Times, Clean Technica, JMK Research