The government is working on a dedicated support scheme for polysilicon manufacturing, including capital expenditure assistance, as it targets at least 30 gigawatt (GW) of domestic capacity by 2030 to plug a key gap in India’s solar manufacturing chain.
Setting up a polysilicon plant along with metallurgical-grade silicon requires investment of around Rs 850 crore per GW, Renewable Energy Secretary Santosh Kumar Sarangi said on Friday. At the targeted 30-GW scale, the manufacturing build-out would entail an investment of more than Rs 25,000 crore.
“We are thinking and working on a scheme which will support manufacturing of polysilicon,” Sarangi told reporters on the sidelines of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit. The details of the scheme are still being worked out.
“To ensure India’s energy security and ensure that India’s manufacturing resilience is maintained, any capacity of 30 gigawatts and above should be good for the Indian context. So, we would look at at least 30 gigawatts of capacity addition by 2030,” Sarangi said.
The fresh intervention assumes significance as polysilicon is the upstream component of the solar value chain, even as India has expanded manufacturing capacity further downstream.
The government’s existing production-linked incentive scheme covers polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules, but Sarangi said only “a very small capacity” of polysilicon is likely to materialise under it. With India requiring a much larger manufacturing base, the ministry is now considering additional support specifically for polysilicon producers.
At the summit, Sarangi said domestic polysilicon production could be begin around 2029-30, while investments are also being made in the ingot-wafer segment.
The ministry is considering capital support as part of the new intervention. Sarangi said the government was “looking at adding a polysilicon component through which we will provide capex to polysilicon manufacturers and encourage them to come up with polysilicon.”
Separately, Sarangi said emerging storage technologies were also gathering momentum. NTPC Green Energy has placed a 100-MW order for vanadium flow batteries, with domestic manufacturers working on supplies. He said prices could decline as demand and volumes increase, potentially making the technology a “game changer”.