Foreign kit dominates in India's NSM

Just 35% of the PV projects brought on line under the aegis of India’s National Solar Mission (NSM) to date have used domestically made cells and modules, underscoring the painful crossroads Delhi faces as it hammers out the rules for “phase 2” of the NSM.

Some 366MW of NSM-sponsored PV capacity has been connected to the grid in India over the past three years, the largest slice of which was allocated as part of “phase 1-batch 1” in late 2011, according to the Ministry for New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).

Of that, just 130MW uses domestically sourced cells and modules, the government says. Developers building arrays based on crystalline silicon (c-Si) technology were required to use domestically made modules – but not cells – for phase 1-batch 1 projects.

The ratio of domestic-to-foreign-made kit will likely shift more…

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