Future solar bids will be tagged with local manufacture, says Minister

Bidders will have to use locally manufactured equipment for a portion of all future bids to set up solar power projects in the country.

Speaking at a business session with representatives from Seychelles, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power and Renewable Energy, RK Singh said, “We have set a target to have 175 GW of installed renewable energy power generation capacity by 2022. We are going to achieve this target and might even cross 200 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2022.”

India’s plans to support the domestic solar cell and module manufacturing industry had hit an air pocket when the World Trade Organisation had struck down the domestic content requirement clause in the country’s National Solar Mission round 1. The government has since been looking for means to aid the sector struggling to compete with much cheaper Chinese equipment.

Singh said that India will want to continue with competitive bids to keep adding renewable energy capacity.

But, future bids for these projects will not be similar to the ones till now. To lower import dependence, Singh said that there will be a mandatory local sourcing component in the coming bids. He said, “We are going to come out with bigger bids but our future bids will be tagged along with manufacturing. So we would bid out the capacity, plus the commitment to manufacture up to 50 per cent of the capacity which was bid for. That is for manufacturing of solar cells from poly-silicon onwards.”

Singh also said that India will focus on having more storage linked projects. He said, “We are going to add storage rapidly to the bidding route. There will also be an obligation to manufacture storage up to a certain percentage. That is the growth trajectory we are targeting.”

Singh also said that India’s renewable energy sector over the past four years has garnered an investment of $42 billion.

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