Govt invites bids for solar PV manufacturing under PLI scheme.

The government has floated a proposal inviting bids worth ₹19,500 crore from solar PV module manufacturers (SMM) for setting up manufacturing capacities for high efficiency modules under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.

State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has floated the request for selection (RFS) document inviting bids under the second tranche of the PLI scheme with a corpus of ₹19,500 crore. The aim is to create a Giga Watt (GW) scale manufacturing capacity for high efficiency solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

The last date for submitting bids is January 11, 2023, and the bids will be opened the next day.

In September 2022, Cabinet approved the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) proposal for implementing the second tranche of the PLI scheme. Government expects it to lead to an installed manufacturing capacity of about 65,000 megawatt (MW) per annum of fully and partially integrated solar PV modules and direct investment of around ₹94,000 crore.

The first tranche of PLI was for a corpus of ₹4,500 crore with bids for around 55 GW of PV manufacturing capacity being received.

The total domestic capacity for manufacturing solar modules is about 20 GW, of which about 13.3 GW has been enlisted in the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM). The capacity for manufacturing solar cells is around 4 GW.

HBL