Recently, according to foreign media reports, the solar photovoltaic installed capacity in the Indian market in the first half of the year increased significantly year-on-year, reaching 4.87GW. Not only was it a sharp increase of 274.6% compared to the 1.3GW in the same period last year, it also exceeded the 3.2GW installed capacity for the whole year of 2020, far exceeding market expectations.
Affected by the Covid-19 in 2020, India has closed the country and the construction of many new energy projects has been forced to stop, resulting in a sharp drop in new photovoltaic installations. In 2021, India’s anti-epidemic situation is still not optimistic, but the newly installed photovoltaic capacity has increased significantly, even exceeding the 3.2GW in the same period in 2019, which is not easy.
According to industry forecasts, if India can continue to maintain this growth rate, the annual new installed capacity of 2021 will exceed 10GW, returning to its position as the third largest photovoltaic market in the world.
India will achieve this result under such difficult circumstances, mainly due to the new tariff policy announced by the Minister of New Energy and Renewable Energy of India at the beginning of the year. Starting from April 1, 2022, 20 % Tariffs, and 40% tariffs will be levied on imported components.
This is mainly to protect local photovoltaic companies, but local installers know well that the photovoltaic products produced by local companies are not as good as imported modules and mc4 connectors from China in terms of price and quality. Therefore, they have accelerated their pace to carry out photovoltaic project construction before the new tariffs.
Behind such good results in the Indian photovoltaic market, many Chinese photovoltaic companies will also benefit.
According to the ranking list of the Indian solar energy market previously announced by Mercom India Research. In the first half of 2020, Sungrow is the largest supplier of solar central inverters in India, and Huawei is the largest supplier of string inverters in India. The re-emergence of the Indian market will definitely allow Sungrow and Huawei’s shipments in India to grow further.
In terms of components, the company with the largest shipments in India in the first half of 2020 is the company we are familiar with. The rise of the Indian market has a very special significance for Longi.
According to Longi’s 2020 annual report, of Longi’s 54.583 billion yuan in revenue, 33.122 billion yuan comes from China, accounting for 60.7%, but the Asia-Pacific region’s revenue is only 7.522 billion yuan, accounting for 13.8%.
The strength of the Chinese market and the weakness of the relatively weak overseas market layout have emerged at the same time. The rise of the Indian market will help Longi increase its overseas market revenue. In order to complete the 2021 annual shipment volume of 40GW (including self-use), the “small target” of the annual revenue of 85 billion yuan.
However, due to the strategic needs of the global market layout, Longi is also likely to build a production base in India like Sungrow, so as to better avoid trade barriers.