Solarsis-Abound venture mulls solar PV plant

Solar Integration Systems India Private Limited (Solarsis), a Hyderabad-based company that offers ‘concept-to-completion’ services for grid-connected and off-grid systems using solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, is looking at the possibility of forming a joint venture (JV) with US-based Abound Solar for setting up a cadmium telluride thin-film PV solar modules manufacturing facility at one of its group companies — Sri City — a special economic zone (SEZ) at Tada in Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, the southern border abutting the neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

“We are now making our second plant at Indiana in the US and our intention is to make facilities elsewhere. India is certainly one market, which we are interested in. The Indian market looks very strong and is a good place to put up a facility…certainly the Indian manufacturing plant’s plans will take shape in the next two to three years,”  Julian Hawkins, senior vice-president (sales and marketing) o0f Abound Solar, told Business Standard.

Confirming the development, Solarsis chief executive of active investor Srini Raju-promoted Solarsis, Venkat Rajaraman, said Abound officials visited the Sri City SEZ recently and had discussions with them in this regard.

“We are working out the modalities, including the investments, shareholding pattern and the production capacities,” Rajaraman said.

“There is a lot of demand for local equipment and we expect the National Solar Mission to make it mandatory to use thin-film PV modules in building solar power plants in the country by next year.  Discussions with Abound Solar are under way and a possible development on this front – from the current drawing board stage to reality – will crystalise sometime early next calendar year,” he added.

Abound Solar, based out of Colorado in the US, recently closed on a $400-million loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to fund the expansion of the company’s manufacturing capacity and help cater to the demand for its products in emerging markets such as India.

“Our second plant at Tipton in Indiana is under construction and our plan is to take our total manufacturing capacity to 840 Mw — 200 Mw at Colorado and 640 Mw at Indiana — by 2014,” Hawkins said.

Solarsis and Abound today entered into a long-term sales agreement under which the latter would supply cadmium telluride thin-film PV modules and both the companies would together provide solutions based on Abound’s next-generation modules serving project developers in the Indian market.

“The National Solar Mission envisages generating 800 Mw of solar power between this year and the next and 4,000 Mw in the next four years. Our idea is to garner a major chunk (500 Mw) of that. We expect to execute 10 per cent of the planned 500 Mw using Abound’s technology in two years from now,” Rajaraman said

Stating that the company had recently commissioned a 2-Mw solar power plant at Tada in Nellore district, he said the company was implementing one 1-Mw project at Kadiri in Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh under the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) programme, which was scheduled to be completed by September this year.

“The Kadiri project is the first to use Abound’s cadmium telluride thin-film PV technology in India,” he said, adding Solarsis earned revenues of Rs 21 crore last fiscal and was expecting Rs 75 crore this fiscal and Rs 250 crore in the next two years.