Solar companies see favourable market in India
New capacity addition for 2017 is expected to touch 8.8 GW, a rise of 76 per cent over 2016 and making India the third biggest solar market worldwide.
Hyderabad: India is seeing a surge in renewable energy production and more so in solar space. Both from the consumption and production, there is increase in the country. India’s module manufacturing installed capacity is around 2.9 GW. This is around 52 per cent of over 5.5 GW, which is the total capacity addition in the country in 2017. New capacity addition for 2017 is expected to touch 8.8 GW, a rise of 76 per cent over 2016 and making India the third biggest solar market worldwide.
Saurabh Marda, co-founder & MD, Freyr Energy told Telangana Today, “Both domestic and overseas opportunities augur well for the Indian solar companies. The recent regulatory moves by the US aimed at reducing import dependency from nations such as China, will open up more business avenues for the domestic companies here. Those solar companies which were either growing slow or were seeing their order books dry up, can turn healthy now by serving the US market.”
V V Kamath, MD, Fronius India, said, “Adoption of renewable energy is growing in India. Transport infrastructure projects are increasingly going the solar way. For instance Kochi Metro is fully solar-powered. Airports are also increasingly looking at using solar as they use a lot of air conditioners. Every airport in India is a potential hotspot to boost solar energy.”
In the last four years since Fronius entered into the Indian market, it has completed over 5,000 inverter installations in about 20 States, resulting in over 100 MW of solar installations. It has executed installations at Nampally Railway Station in Hyderabad, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, Delhi Metro, Austrian Embassy office (New Delhi), Sula Vineyards in Nashik and Guwahati Railway Station.
The Pune-based company that bagged the Silver Award at Roof top Solar Congress 2018 said, it is planning to double its revenues from Rs 40 crore last year to Rs 80 crore in 2018. Most of this business will come from rooftop segment in metros and urban India. Telangana remains one of the top markets for the company along with national capital region (NCR), Karnataka and Maharashtra. In Telangana alone, the company is projecting a 30 per cent business growth year on-year.
Kamath says, challenges do exist in solar space. The recent safeguard duty brought out by the government on solar panels has brought in some uncertainty. Industry which was healthy during November-December period is impacted from January onwards due to changing policy stand.
And Central government should bring in some clarity in it as earlier power purchase agreements will face ambiguity. Budget focused on agriculture but there was nothing for solar. Government has to take some immediate steps to see that the growth pace is not affected in solar adoption in the country.
Source: telanganatoday
