LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. Ltd may become the first Chinese company to set up a solar equipment manufacturing facility in India, according to two people aware of the development.
The plan to set up a factory in India by LONGi, the world’s largest monocrystalline solar wafer maker, comes in response to Indian government’s proposal to make it mandatory for firms to have local manufacturing capability to bid for the world’s largest solar tender of 20 gigawatts (GW).
Monocrystalline silicon is more efficient and expensive as compared to the multicrystalline silicon, widely used globally in setting up solar power projects.
It also improves the average efficiency of a solar panel, resulting in a better capacity utilization factor (CUF) of a solar project.
Solar modules account for nearly 60 percent of a solar power project’s cost.
Capacity utilization factor is a measure of how well a solar power plant is utilized and is the ratio of the actual electricity output from the plant to the maximum possible output during the year.
The other Chinese firms who have been looking at solar equipment manufacturing in India include; GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd and Trina Solar Ltd.
India has also been conducting an anti-dumping investigation on solar equipment from China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
For China’s solar panel manufacturing industry, with an estimated capacity of around 70GW per year, the US and India are major markets. The Indian solar module market is dominated by Chinese firms, with domestic manufacturers accounting for only 10.6 per cent market share, according to consulting firm Bridge to India.
