India’s solar manufacturing to touch 100GW by 2026

India is emerging as a key player in renewable energy equipment supply chain globally and will become an exporter as its solar manufacturing capacity will alone reach 100GW by the year 2026, a top official said.

The government is implementing a PLI scheme with an outlay of Rs 24,000 crore which is estimated to aid in setting up 48GW of solar equipment manufacturing capacity by 2026. “We aim to create India as a leading global supplier of renewable energy (equipment),” New & Renewable Energy Secretary Bhupinder Singh Bhalla said at a CII event here.

India currently has 28GW of solar module manufacturing capacity and 6GW of solar cell manufacturing at present, said Bhupinder Singh Bhalla. He also pointed out that after the implementation of the PLI scheme, India will be in the position to start manufacturing 100GW by 2026.

“We need to add 30GW to 40GW of solar power capacity every year. We still have a very large substantial capacity for exports. That is why, India will become a key player in the global supply chain (of solar equipment),” he said.

India has an ambitious target of having 500GW of RE capacity by 2030 and aims to have 50% of its electric power capacity from non-fossil fuel based source like solar, wind and green energy. “We aim that India becomes a leading manufacturer of solar modules. India is poised to become a global hub of RE manufacturing,” he said.

“We aim to achieve 50 per cent of our electric power from non-fossil fuels by 2030. India has installed renewable energy (RE) generation capacity of 178 GW as of August 2023 and witnessed the fastest RE capacity addition over the past years,” he stated. Bhupinder Singh Bhalla has informed that India has the fourth largest RE capacity in the world : ISRO launches India’s first solar mission, AdityaL1 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota