Tata BP Solar India Ltd, a solar energy solutions provider, expects to grow its business by about 20%-30% this fiscal by making and selling more solar photo voltaic cells and modules.
NEW DELHI: Tata BP Solar India Ltd, a solar energy solutions provider, expects to grow its business by about 20%-30% this fiscal by making and selling more solar photo voltaic cells and modules, a senior company executive said Friday.
“We had done business $220 million in the last fiscal. We expect it to keep growing at the rate of 20%-30% for the next few years,” Tata BP Solar’s CEO K Subramanya said. The company is in the process of expanding its manufacturing capacity to make enough solar photo voltaic cells in a year for generating 180 mw of electricity from the current 52 mw, Subramanya said.
It has an additional capacity to make solar modules for generation of 125 mw of electricity.
Solar module is a collection of a number of solar cells electrically connected and packaged together.
There is a huge potential for the development of solar power generation market in India, since it is a fast growing economy and needs to fast expand its power generation capacity, Subramanya said.
“India deploys only 1% of over 4,000 mw worth of solar cells produced in a year,” he said, adding that by comparison, Germany alone deploys about 1,000 mw of cells in a year.
“India, however, makes much more of solar cells and modules, bur exports majority of that to western Europe and neighbouring countries,” Subramanya said.
The market for solar power generation in India is likely to grow in the future with conducive policy environment, more investment, cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and more awareness, he said.
“The government needs to create long-term projects, guarantee off-take (of the power generated using solar technology), make available lending for the people who want to buy solar power generation solutions, allow power trading from the captive power generation units, lower the interest costs and issue mandate to polluting companies and energy guzzlers to promote solar energy,” he said.
Germany, for example, he said, has two-way metering through which the households or industries generating solar power can also pump it back into the grid in addition to using it for their own consumption. The country buys power from such generating units at thrice the price it sells the power to them to promote solar energy generation, he said.
World over, the solar energy generation will grow with the development of technology, policy becoming more conducive and growing of scale, which will drive the prices down, Subramanya said.
The cost, however, is only a matter of perception, he said, adding that currently, the cost of establishing diesel energy generation units is comparable to solar energy units. “The beauty of solar power is that it’s only a one-time investment and there is no repetitive cost,” he said.
a_shaleen@dnaindia.net
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