India To Become World’s Second-Largest Solar PV Manufacturer By 2026: Study & others 49

ALMM Suspension: Glass Half-Full for Solar Stakeholders

• The government’s decision to keep the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) policy in abeyance for a year has prioritized expeditious solar capacity addition over injecting some uncertainty among module manufacturers.
• Earlier this month, the government suspended the application of ALMM until March 31, 2024.
• The module supply regime needed to be liberalized, at least briefly.
• Further, the official said that the ALMM list had created a closed market where suppliers could leverage their unique position on pricing the modules, which had exasperated the developers.
• The developers conveyed this to policymakers while advocating for suspending ALMM.

India’s solar panel sector to be ‘self-sufficient’ by 2026, emerge as alternative to Chinese solar PV modules

• India’s solar cell and PV module capacity has more than doubled since 2020, the research shows.
• In 2020, India’s solar cell nameplate capacity stood at 3 GW, which grew to 6.6 GW by March 2023.
• This, the findings say, is in response to the “favourable policy environment created by the Indian government.”
• Apart from the PLI scheme, tariffs on solar PV imports and creating a list of approved models and manufacturers has helped motivate domestic manufacturing.

India To Become World’s Second-Largest Solar PV Manufacturer By 2026: Study

• A joint study by the |#IEEFA and #JMK Research claimed that India might become self-sufficient in solar PVs in the next three years.
• The study said module manufacturing capacity increased by over double last year in the country.
• The report claimed that with the anticipated cumulative 110 GW of solar PV module capacity by 2026, India is set to become the second-largest producer of solar PVs, second only to China.
• The two tranches of the government’s PLI scheme reveal that there will be an increase of 51.6GW of module capacity and at least 27.4GW of integrated “polysilicon-to-module” capacity in the country in the next three to four years, the report said.
• Meanwhile, the report also hinted that some bottlenecks must be fixed for the sector’s growth.
• “With the Chinese government mulling restrictions on the outflow of the critical technology used in the manufacture of these upstream components, it is imperative for countries targeting integrated PV manufacturing at scale to identify alternate sources of supply for these raw materials,” says the report’s co-author Nagoorbabu Shaik Shaik, Senior Research Associate.