Solar PV Manufacturing in India — Industry Roundtable Assessment

NZIPL Industry Roundtable, New Delhi, February 2026 (DRAFT)
Assessment prepared for internal use — NZIPL CVCE

I. Context

NZIPL convened two industry roundtable sessions in New Delhi (February 2026) focused on solar PV and BESS manufacturing. Participants included vertically integrated manufacturers, wafer producers, industry associations, R&D institutions, think tanks, and consultancies. The goal: systematic feedback on what has worked and what has not in India’s clean technology industrial strategy.

II. Headline Policy Recommendations

India Solar Growth 2035–40 Roadmap — Develop a medium-to-long term national manufacturing roadmap signalling technology priorities (including next-gen), capacity targets, and upstream integration timelines for industry and R&D.
Ecosystem-wide mapping — Commission a comprehensive solar PV ecosystem mapping (metal and machinery dependencies, equipment-vendor gaps, single-source vulnerabilities) leveraging REIIMS portal data, with collaboration across central/state governments, MNRE, NITI Aayog, industry, and academia.
Roadmap-Linked Incentives (RLI) scheme — Redesign incentive architecture to enable small and mid-tier players; align milestones to domestic content addition, R&D expenditure, and upstream integration. Complement or replace volume-based PLI logic.
Extend ALMM — Extend and fine-tune the ALMM framework; add a new ALMM scheme for critical ancillary components and machinery (not just modules, cells, wafers).
Close the upstream gap — Address near-zero polysilicon and ingot/wafer domestic capacity through targeted capital support, volatility hedging instruments, and dedicated upstream PLI tranches.
Strengthen government-industry-academia tracks — Institute a CSR-style R&D funding vehicle for greater state-industry-academia integration, especially for frontier technologies (perovskite tandem cells) and process/materials innovation.
Anti-dumping and boom-bust monitoring — Create a standing cell within Ministry of Commerce or NITI Aayog to track Chinese price movements, loss-making capacity, and subsidy patterns. Distinguish genuine competitiveness from state-backed dumping.

III. Value Chain Capability Status (2010–2025)

Stage	2010–2015	2015–2020	2020	2025	2030 (est.)
Polysilicon (GW)	0	0	0	0–3.3	15–38
Ingot/Wafer (GW)	0	0	0	4–14	15–56
Cells (GW)	1.2	3	3–4	18–29	59–171
Modules (GW)	2.3–5.7	5.7–8	10–15	33–210	110–279

Key read: India has scaled downstream (modules) substantially; upstream (polysilicon, wafers) remains the critical gap. PLI achieved 56% of module capacity targets and only 14% of polysilicon targets as of June 2025.

IV. Key Takeaways by Theme

1. Manufacturing Ecosystem

Decisions hinge on efficiency, energy, and cost — all three must be addressed together.
Equipment vendor gaps: significant limitations in domestic availability of key machinery across the value chain.
Design and fabrication: module assembly is well-established; cell fabrication growing; domestic design and fabrication capability still needs investment.
Falling LCOE: policy must account for continuing decline in levelized cost of energy and its margin pressure on domestic manufacturers.

2. Key Inputs, Machinery & Materials

Silver paste: critical for solar cell manufacturing (17% of PV sector demand in 2025); silver rallied +130% in 2025. India imports essentially all of it. R&D received no government support despite repeated requests. Firms are shifting toward copper alternatives and hybrid pastes.
Junction boxes: critical component; growing indigenous capability but needs strengthening.
Diamond wire saws: critical; limited domestic capability.
Perovskite/tandem cells: efficiency > 30% in lab settings; not yet commercialised. India has R&D activity at IIT-B and IISc startups.

3. Policy & Regulatory Landscape

PLI: debate on whether it favours large incumbents. Counter-argument: scale is necessary given the China challenge. RLI (milestone-based) proposed as an alternative or complement.
ALMM: widely viewed as crucial for building domestic industry. ALMM List III (wafers, from June 2028) welcomed. Participants favour extension to ancillary components.
Distribution-focused policies: PM Surya Ghar (PMSGY, 2024) and PM-KUSUM are shaping domestic demand. State-level policies (MSEDCL in Maharashtra) also noted.

4. R&D

Funding availability: public R&D funding barriers have substantially reduced — no longer the primary constraint.
Private R&D: firms invest none to limited resources in research and design. A major producer actively invests in solar-adjacent startups.
Key institutions: NCPRE (IIT-B), IISc. China’s Trina Solar operates a State Key Lab of PV Science with 200+ members and 32 world records — highlighted as a model of academia-industry integration.
Process innovation: occurs as much on factory floors as in labs. Necessitates academia-government-industry collaboration.
Patent purchasing vs building: some participants advocated purchasing patents as cost-saving; others emphasised this does not build production capability.
Pilot manufacturing: cost-competitiveness of pilot projects in India questioned vs. other countries; some argue focus on design R&D instead.

5. Circularity

Manufacturing PV panels is energy-intensive; production processes for certain module types have greater emissions intensity.
Building circularity infrastructure now is important — first decommissioning wave approaches.

6. China Factor

“Trade policy is climate policy”: China’s competitive position is the defining structural challenge.
China’s solar industry built over 20+ years; India’s serious effort post-2019 — timeline comparisons must account for this lag.
Chinese industry: dominant (>86–97% of each value chain stage) but characterised by significant loss-making firms supported by local/state governments.
OECD: solar has been the most subsidised industrial sector globally since 2005 (3.2% of revenue vs. 0.9% MAGIC average).
2024–2025: China’s top 5 PV firms posted total losses of RMB 28.9–32.8 billion (US$4.1–4.7B); ~87,000 jobs shed.
Boom-bust cycles: India needs monitoring capability to identify opportunities and headwinds.

7. Skill Building

Industry and government need to jointly identify how to train the next generation of solar technologists.
Curriculum, programs, and institute identification are pressing needs.

8. Key Trends

C&I RE uptake: commercial and industrial consumers (especially metals sector) transitioning to RE as it becomes cost-competitive — will shape RE demand and solar manufacturing trajectory.
Transmission bottleneck: solar projects take ~18 months to build vs. ~5 years for coal; grid buildout cannot match pace of solar deployment, creating bottlenecks.

V. Cross-Reference with NZIPL Trade Analytics

See solar_india_policy_synthesis.html for the full integration of these roundtable findings with CVCE trade analytics (BACI 1995–2024, PC scores, ORBIS data). Summary:

Theme	RT finding	Trade Analytics	Convergence
Assembly vs. manufacturer	Module capability strong; upstream weak	Large deficits in process equipment and processed materials	Full convergence
China dependence	Dominant + state-backed + boom-bust	Partner HHI rising sharply since 2015	Full convergence
Silver paste / components	Below radar of aggregate policy	Not resolved at HS 6-digit; analytical gap	Productive tension
PLI vs. RLI	Split view — scale vs. capability	HHI still rising post-PLI; import structure unchanged	Trade data supports capability critique
R&D gap	Public funding OK; private R&D near-zero	PC scores improving but structurally trade-driven	Private R&D not in model
Perovskite	Leapfrog opportunity (lab stage)	No dedicated HS code; current advantage in silicon chain	Data can’t assess leapfrog timing

Source: NZIPL Industry Roundtable Key Takeaways — Solar PV, New Delhi, February 2026 (DRAFT). Assessment by Oriol Vallès Codina, NZIPL.