Solar Energy : Solar Cell Industry

  • India’s domestic industry has around half-a-dozen makers of solar cells and modules, with total capacity of around 3,000 MW.
  • This is hardly enough to meet country’s burgeoning demand.
  • Union Government has imposed safeguard duty of 25% on import of solar cells (whether or not assembled in modules or panels) from China and Malaysia.
  • The move is aimed at helping domestic solar cell manufacturing sector.
  • The safeguard duty now puts locally-made panels on par with imported ones in terms of cost.
  • Solar Power projects now will have to revive their supply chain and make input components locally instead of importing them and put modules together here.
  • Domestic sector is not being fully exploited because of obsolete technology.
  • Moreover price of solar equipment produced in the country is not competitive as compared to that of foreign manufacturers, especially Chinese manufacturers.
  • Domestic sector needs to do lot more to be effective meet required standards as compared to imported solar cells.
  • They also need to improve technology.

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