Adani Group Assigns 30,00 TPA Polysilicon Manufacturing Project to EIL

In an interesting move, public sector consulting firm Engineers India Limited (EIL), which has hitherto had a strong presence in the oil, gas and fertiliser sectors, has announced a major deal from the Adani Group for consulting on a 30,000 MTPA Polysilicon facility at Mundra, Gujarat. Mundra is where Adani group is putting together it’s 10 GW and more integrated facilities for solar equipment manufacturing.

In a formal filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, EIL has informed that “Engineers India Limited (EIL) has secured an assignment for providing Owner’s Engineer Services for 30,000 MTPA Polysilicon and 500 MTPA Monosilane Project from M/s Mundra Solar Technology Limited (a group company of M/s Adani Enterprises Ltd.), in one of the niche sectors of Polysilicon production, which is the primary component for manufacturing Photovoltaic panels. Conventionally, India has been dependent on import of Polysilicon and this would be a step towards realizing the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat.”

While polysilicon is the first building block to building sola modules before being processed further into ingots, wafers, cells and modules finally,  Monosilane gases have a key use as an anti-reflective coating for solar cells and feedstock for photovoltaics.

While this is the first big project for EIL in the solar space, readers will be aware that solar grade polysilicon is distinct from electronics grade polysilicon, made for the semi conductor industry. With significant plans being announced for semiconductor manufacturing in the country too, expect more action in this space soon. With this announcement, the Adani griyp has effectively become the first one to move forward on its plans for manufacturing polysilicon that were announced earlier this year. It also places it firmly for a significant piece of the PLI scheme for solar manufacturing, which has weightage for backward integration, where only the Reliance group is also a clear favourite.

Polysilicon manufacturing is more a chemical process than electronics, making it very distinct from the rest of the solar module manufacturing chain. Many would state that it should not be part of the solar PLI at all, being better suited for a chemicals or even electronics PLI scheme perhaps.