Recent developments in solar manufacturing in India

India has been one of the major deployers of solar PV during the last decade, having installed about 50 GW during this period. Since 2021, there has, in addition, been a great deal of interest to set up the solar manufacturing chain in the country, from polysilicon and wafers to cells and modules. Driven by a slew of policies and incentives announced by the government, several companies have announced and embarked on solar manufacturing. It is being estimated that by 2025, there will be about 40 GW of module production in India, some of it with full or partial upstream integration. This would make India one of the two or three leading solar manufacturers in the world. This paper describes the incentives provided and the companies’ responses to these incentives. It also describes and recommends technology options available for manufacturing in India, and estimates India's cost competitiveness of manufacturing, comparing countries as well as technologies. The paper further outlines the requirements for ancillary manufacturing units and for concerted R&D and training to support and enable a fully integrated modern solar manufacturing ecosystem in India. Although the focus of this paper is on India, the challenges and opportunities would also be relevant to other countries of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).