India wants its own solar industry but has to break reliance with China first

To compete with China, India wants to make solar panels from scratch. But dependence on its rival for key components make it a tough task

India’s solar industry doesn’t only have ambitious plans to install solar panels, it wants to make them too. 

The world’s most populous nation already manufactures some solar PV. But the process is largely that of an assembly line, where imported components are fitted together into modules.

Further up the supply chain, solar components are made from a high-grade silicon known as polysilicon. Today, polysilicon production – like every other stage of solar manufacturing – is dominated by China. 

But buoyed by energy security concerns and US-China trade tensions, a handful of Indian solar manufacturers are benefiting from government support to produce polysilicon components in India. 

Among them is Adani Solar – the greener side of the Indian multinational conglomerate which was built on a bedrock of coal.

In this second story in our Clean Energy Frontier series, Monika Mondal reports from the city of Mundra, Gujarat, where Adani intends to build a polysilicon-to-module manufacturing hub. 

Think-tank Ieefa foresees that India could become the world’s second-largest solar PV manufacturer by 2026 – producing enough solar panels to be self-sufficient and export the surplus. 

But India’s dependence on China for solar components and technology runs deep and its attempt to rival its neighbour’s colossal solar production capacity will require a lot more government support.

Cover photo: Women walking inside the solar park to fetch water. Photo: Mitul Kajaria