Latest March ALMM List from MNRE for Solar PV

The ministry of new and renewable energy has released its latest ALMM (Approved list of module manufacturers) list for domestic manufacturers in India, and the list continues to expand. The newest version, released through an office memorandum on March 4, has a total of 46 firms listed, comprising 43 unique firms in all. As Waaree Energies and Vikram Solar have approvals for separate plants too. The latest list follows the last version in January this year.

Even as Waaree Energies continues to have approvals in place for the highest manufacturing capacity of  2100 MW, Vikram Solar is right next with approvals in place for 2022 MW of capacity spread across its plants in Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

New entrants include Citizen Solar Private Limited (50 MW), Kosol Energie Private Limited (171 MW), Lubi Electronics (125 MW), Rayzon Green Energies (200 MW) and finally, ECE Energies Private Limited for 50 MW capacity. Interestingly, other than ECE Energies, all the new entrants are Gujarat based, continuing the dominance of Gujarat in solar manufacturing. As we have pointed out earlier, significant future capacities under the PLI  scheme are also set to come up in the state, notably from Reliance Industries, which will dement Gujarat’s place as one of the biggest regions worldwide, for solar manufacturing. In fact, it doesn’t seem impossible to consider  it akin to Jiangsu province in China, which attracted a lot of solar manufacturing too.

While the new entrants are relatively small players, they do operate in very specific niches including solar water pumps and more, which will help them become more effective now.

With the MNRE already mandating the use of output from the ALMM manufacturers in a wider array of projects by taking a more flexible approach to defining a project as government supported, the additional capacity is certainly needed to fill the yawning market demand for quality solar modules.