India Installed Solar Capacity 6,000 MW in 6 years

 LONDON, May 26: India is on track to become one of the largest installers of solar power globally as its installed solar capacity has reached 6,000 megawatts from 10 megawatts in less than six years, according to a solar power manufacturer.

Kolkata-headquartered Vikram Solar believes the government's ambitious International Solar Alliance (ISA) reflects India's strong commitment towards the sector.

"Rewind to 2010, India was at 10MW installed capacity of solar. Fast-forward to 2016, we are at 6GW or 6,000MW. In less than six years, we have achieved such a large leap. So I have no doubt in my mind that India can and will be one of the largest installers of solar power globally.

"It is already one of the top five. 'Make in India' as well as the solar mission is actually a good combination and we should be able to merge that and make it happen successfully," Managing Director and CEO of the company Gyanesh Chaudhary told PTI during a recent visit to London.

"Vikram Solar is embedded with the Indian mission to achieve the huge aim in the solar sector 100GW by 2022. We started manufacturing in India when India did not know about solar, or knew very little about solar. We are one of the largest manufacturers now, with over 0.5GW of manufacturing capacity," he said.

The company has presence in more than 32 countries. It claims to be India's only Tier 1 Photovoltaic module manufacturer as per a Bloomberg quality ranking with a track record of 120 MW installed solar project capacity in India.

"We are the largest exporter of solar panels out of India to the UK. Almost all the large developers are working with us and importing our panels. Others include the US, Japan and the Middle East. We are the only Indian manufacturer who is actually exporting to Japan, which is a very high quality market. This shows that Indian manufacturers can actually achieve high quality," Chaudhry said.

The firm is aiming for revenues of USD one billion by 2020 and claims to have an order book worth USD 3-million with plans of approaching the capital markets soon.

India launched ISA at the Paris Climate Conference in December last year, inviting all countries located fully or partly between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn to join for accelerating solar energy.

-PTI (Aditi Khanna )