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: few companies in silicon manufacturing as it is capital-intensive.

Given the robust growth that the solar PV industry is witnessing, polysilicon suppliers have been sprucing up their capacity. By 2010, capacity of the top seven polysilicon suppliers is expected to increase to almost two to three times the capacity in 2007.

Most of the capacity expansion plans would come on stream by this year, with further expansions at varying rates planned up to 2010. It is expected that the prevalent polysilicon demand supply gap could cool off in 2009, insists Kotwal. “India does not have any major domestic source of polysilicon, except Metkem Solar (Sanmar Group), which supplies it in small quantities to Bhel and BEL for their solar cell production,” he adds.

At present, the solar cell producers import almost 100% of their solar wafer requirement, as the country does not have a domestic manufacturer. Poseidon Chemicals, which is a subsidiary of Solar Fabrik, Germany, reclaims/recycles wafers, but that too on a very small scale. Although, many companies have announced their foray into the solar PV space in India, most of these have been for solar cell/module manufacturing, and primarily for the export markets. Reliance has announced plans to set up a fully integrated solar PV facility (polysilicon, solar-grade wafers and SPV modules) with a total capacity of 1 GW in Jamnagar.

According to a report by Prometheus Institute and GreenTech Media, the three-year competition for silicon between solar and semiconductor companies will end later this year as silicon manufacturers roll out new production lines. The vast majority of today’s solar panels also rely on silicon to turn sunlight into electricity. The growing interest in solar energy worldwide has pitted solar companies against chip businesses in recent years, particularly because silicon producers couldn’t make enough to satisfy both types of customers.

The report says that in 2007, solar companies used about 30,000 of 48,900 metric tonne of silicon produced worldwide last year. By 2012, the total silicon-manufacturing capacity could reach more than 2,61,742 metric tonne.

A Frost & Sullivan report suggests that India has abundant solar resources, as it receives about 3,000 hours of sunshine every year. It has a potential of about 20 mw per sq km and the daily average solar energy incident is about 4.7 kWh per sq m depending on the location. However, investments in the solar power sector are relatively low when compared to Europe, North America and China.