China-based Trinasolar is working on its plan to set up a manufacturing unit in India to tap the over 10 GW annual solar equipment market in the country, a company official said.
The company has land near Visakhapatnam which was acquired in 2015 for setting up manufacturing plant here. About three years ago company wanted to set up a plant to manufacture 500 to 700 MW of solar equipment annually. But now this could be even higher in view of India's annual market size of 10 GW of solar equipment.
The plant would require at least half a billion US dollar investment as per the estimates worked out earlier by the company.
Commenting on the recently imposed safeguard duty on solar equipment, Yin was of the view that its impact may be big in short term but in long-term renewables market would grow in India as has been the case elsewhere in the world.
He told that solar business from commercial and residential constitute 40 per cent in China and 60 per cent in Europe which were earlier mainly power producers markets.
Citing the case of the US, he said that the market has grown to the size of 9.5 GW which would be 11 GW next year and a majority of it is from commercial and residential segments.
"Trina Solar supplied 3.5GW, so we accounted for 15 per cent of the total. That means we are the clear market leader here in India."
India is also Trina Solar's second largest market in the Asia Pacific after China. It entered the Indian market in 2010.
Now that we have solidified our strong position in the utility segment of the market, we are moving into the household and SME sector with the launch today in India of Trinahome.
Trina Solar India director, Gaurav Mathur, said: We recognize that B2B (business-to-business) is very different from B2C (business-to-consumer). Prior to today's launch, we have been working behind the scenes to develop a nationwide customer service network, so we can reach consumers in all the towns and cities in India. This includes even those in the most remote rural areas.
According to India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India's solar energy capacity, as of the end of July this year, was 21.9GW from utility and only 1.2GW from the rooftop.
Mathur said: Trinahome will help to boost demand in the market for rooftop by giving SMEs and households an easy and affordable solution.
The Trinahome comes in three sizes: 3KW, 5KW and 10KW. Trina Solar also has different mounting systems for different roof-types, so Trinahome can be installed on any type of roof in India.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)