Shares of solar power majors hit the roof on Friday on reports of Prime Minister Narendra Modi betting on renewable energy to help meet rising power demand.

Shares of Indosolar jumped 20 per cent at ₹7.20 and Websol Energy Systems spurted 20 per cent at ₹22.85. Moser-Baer jumped 12.92 per cent at ₹10.05 on the NSE and Surana Solar moved up 2.6 per cent at ₹60.55.

1 lakh MW target

A Reuters report quoted Upendra Tripathy, top official in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, as saying Modi now wants companies from China, Japan, Germany and the US to lead investments of $100 billion over seven years to boost India’s solar energy capacity by 33 times to 1 lakh megawatts (MW). That would raise solar’s share of total energy mix in the country to more than 10 per cent.

The surge in the prices of solar stocks has been on the cards for some time, perhaps awaiting a trigger. Union Minister for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal told the domestic solar cells and modules manufacturers in July to go ahead and expand their capacities and assured them of enough orders.

More recently, the government had said that Defence and para-military forces would put up solar plants of “over 300 MW” using only domestically-manufactured modules. Further, the government has also approved a scheme under which central public sector undertakings would put up solar projects of 1,000 MW with a ₹1,000 crore viability gap funding of the government — again using only local modules.

In a recent chat with BusinessLine , Ajay Goel, the CEO of Tata Power Solar, said the mood of solar module manufacturers in India had changed in recent months from “despondency to considering investing in capacity expansions.”

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