Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh, on Wednesday, said that the second tranche of the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme on manufacturing will help save around ₹1.4-lakh crore foreign exchange on an annual basis.

The Cabinet, on Wednesday, approved the implementation of the second tranche of PLI scheme with an outlay of ₹19,500 crore on the national programme on high efficiency solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

“This [PLI] will lead to around ₹1.40-lakh crore saving because of domestic manufacturing. And it will also result in a huge quantity of inflows on account of exports,” Singh told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of ‘Agni’ campaign.

The first tranche of PLI for solar for Rs 4,500 crore was approved last year and the bids were awarded in November-December 2021.

Attract investments

Later briefing reporters, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) Secretary Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi noted that the second tranche of the manufacturing subsidy scheme will lead to an investment of ₹9,400 crore and will generate about 1.95 lakh direct jobs and around 7.80 lakh indirect jobs.

“A total integrated capacity of 8.7 gigawatt (GW) was awarded under the first tranche. Integrated capacity means across the solar value chain from polysilicon to wafers to cells to modules. The bids received in that auction (first PLI) were for about Rs 24,000 crore, so the balance Rs 19,500 crore, which we requested. It was announced in the budget. The Finance Minister said that it is for high efficiency modules with particular emphasis on fully-integrated capacity,” the Secretary said.

On the second tranche of the scheme, Chaturvedi pointed out that Wednesday’s is the bid design for additional allocation of ₹19,500 crore.

Providing the break up of the second tranche of subsidy, he said Rs 12,000 crore is earmarked for fully integrated, which is polysilicon to wafers to cells to modules capacity. Then Rs 4,500 crore for three-stage integration, which is wafers to cells to modules, and Rs 3,000 crore is for integration across cells and modules.

“Our estimate is that this will lead to a capacity of 29 GW of fully integrated plants. Another 18 GW of plant integrated from wafters to modules and 18 GW of plant integrated over cells and modules, which is a total capacity of 65 GW of modules,” he noted.

500 GW by 2030

On the government’s target of 500 GW of installed capacity from non-fossil fuels by 2030, Chaturvedi explained that would mean roughly a capacity of 280-300 GW from solar.

“This would mean that for the remaining years up to 2030, our domestic requirement would be 30-35 GW of modules. Now what we are looking at is 65 GW of modules manufacturing capacity from this bid and 8.7 GW from the earlier bid. This makes the total capacity of about 74 GW, plus some capacities which are coming up without PLI. So it goes beyond 80-90GW. So we have sufficient for our domestic requirement as well as for exports,” he added.