Adani Solar Planning A Complete Ecosystem For Solar Module Manufacturing: Rahul Bhutiani

How do you plan to boost solar module manufacturing in India?

Solar manufacturing in India has been evolving. Slowly, Adani Solar has focussed and moved forward to become a fully integrated solar manufacturer. Today, we have module and cell manufacturing facilities. For the first time in India, we introduced manufacturing ingots and wafers. It ensured getting deeper into the supply chain. The first step of the process of module making is polysilicon. We will be initiating our progress on that, too. By 2027, we will have 10 GW of capacity for polysilicon. We will increase the capacity of cells, wafers and ingots to 10 GW, too.

How do you plan to streamline module production in the days to come? 

We are not halting at vertical and backward integrations. We are also working towards creating an ecosystem of ancillary units to feed into the module manufacturing units. We need solar glass, back sheets, trackers, aluminum frames and others too. We are creating an ecosystem that will have 10 GW of capacity in the same geographical location. It will make it the world’s only ecosystem where everything will be manufactured at the same location with all integration by 2027.

How much see the trend of adoption of TOPCOn technology 

The key element in solar manufacturing is cell manufacturing. At Adani, we have been cautious that one can’t be totally Atmanirbhar unless you have a cell manufacturing facility in the country. We started our facility six years ago. We earlier moved to mono-PERC and shifted towards TOPCOn, which is currently the advanced solar technology globally. TOPCOn is a different cell line, but the advantage is that those who have set up a mono-PERC cell line can upgrade it to TOPCOn with little CAPEX.

How do you see the impact of the ALMM exemption? 

From the manufacturing perspective, we are hopeful of ending the extension of the ALMM exemption. We would like to request the government not to keep the moratorium. Otherwise, the local developers will not have a future with the increased imports. We should get it implemented again from next year. So that some protection and comfort to the domestic sector.