While the Centre is looking forward to add a humungous 100 Gigawatt solar power generating capacity by the year 2022, the domestic production of the solar energy equipment has suffered badly due to the influx of Chinese products, also affecting the Government’s ‘Make In India’ initiatives.
The demand of Indian solar manufacturers, including several State-owned companies, to impose anti-dumping duty on Chinese products is still to see light of the day even as the recently-introduced Safeguard duty of 25 per cent is considered highly inadequate. Currently, India meets about 85 percent of its solar module demand through imports from China while at the same time, capacity utilisation in the solar manufacturing sector in the country is hardly 25 percent.
Creation of 100 GW of solar generation capacity will require a total investment of almost Rs 4-5 lakh crore in the coming years. In the present scenario, a major chunk of this will be on imports.
According to the Indian Solar Manufacturers Association (ISMA), cheap imports from China have flooded the market as the power developers prefer Chinese panels and equipment rather than that manufactured in India. ISMA has petitioned the Government to impose an anti-dumping duty on inbound shipments from China.
“To make solar energy sector sustainable in the long run, the interests of the domestic manufacturers have to be safeguarded. Solar energy will play an important role in the dream to bring electricity to every home in the country. Given the ambitious size of our Solar Energy Programme, the country needs to establish a complete Silicon chain from sand to solar panel.
For this, planned development of the sector, with involvement of all the stakeholders, is essential,” said Dr Nalin Shinghal, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD), Central Electronics Limited (CEL), under Ministry of Science and Technology
CEL has recently re-energised itself and turned around, after many years of losses. It has registered increasing profits for the last five consecutive years.
“We have wiped out the accumulated losses and are now looking at rapid growth in years to come,” Shinghal told The Pioneer.
To sustain the growth of the company, Shinghal claimed to have focused on multiple sectors including collaboration with DRDO labs for development of products like Missile Radomes, which are presently imported at very high cost.
“We are also looking at other areas of strategic importance including bullet proof jackets,” Shinghal said.
CEL is also developing products for Smart Cities concepts, Solar Warehouses, Solar Railway Platform Sheds etc and also working on development of solar charging stations for electric Vehicles.
