India’s Solar Firsts

Let us rejoice as India cements the beginning of a (hopefully) long relationship with solar with plans for its first polysilicon solar project, its largest solar thermal plant and the world’s largest solar farm. Not bad for a country just recently getting into the game—and perhaps expected, for a country with a potential generation capacity of 5,000 trillion kilowatt-hours a year from the sun alone.

The polysilicon project is slated to be a part of the aforementioned solar farm and estimated to produce 2,500 tons of polysilicon a year during its “first phase” and 5,000 tons annually after two years. Indian officials expect the solar farm—the “integrated solar power complex”—to reach a power generation capacity of 5 GW, and the solar thermal plant to reach 10 MW. While India’s solar market is still developing, these are all projects that represent significant steps.

Producing some polysilicon domestically reduces material costs and partly protects fledgling Indian solar industries from the effects of importing expensive foreign silicon—rattled by the soaring silicon prices, China has only recently launched several polysilicon projects of its own, with very high hopes for them. Furthermore, in light of solar thermal’s tremendous success in China over the past decade, both economically/commercially and as an agent of change toward a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, the advancement brought about by India’s new solar thermal plant, as well as further solar thermal incentives, will perhaps be as dramatic for Indians as Chinese solar thermal was for the Chinese.