(Bloomberg) -- China’s Linton Technologies Group, one of the world’s largest makers of machinery to build solar wafers, said it secured an order from an Indian business for equipment to produce enough of the components for a 10-gigawatts solar power plant.
Linton, which has factories in China, the US and Vietnam, will supply the machinery outside of China, said Zhixin Li, chief executive officer of Linton Crystal Technologies, one of the firms in the group. He declined to reveal who the customer was or how much the deal was worth, in an interview at a renewable energy exhibition near New Delhi.
The deal will help India with its goal of growing its own solar manufacturing industry to reduce its reliance on imports. Linton’s enthusiasm in supplying the Indian market is also likely to comfort domestic manufacturers who are concerned about Beijing’s potential ban on exports of high-end solar technology.
India’s wafer manufacturing capacity is likely to reach 100 gigawatts a year by 2030, and Linton aimed to capture half of that market, Li said.
Currently, just one company, Adani Enterprises Ltd., makes 2 gigawatts a year of wafers in India. The country’s capacity to produce solar modules has increased nearly fivefold since 2020, but it relies almost entirely on China for the machinery needed to build them. A massive solar glut in China has fueled speculation authorities there could stop supplying machinery to curb the growth of rival producers.
Companies from Adani to Reliance Industries Ltd. have set goals to manufacture the entire value-chain of solar products, from metallurgical grade silicon to modules, buoyed by a government push toward energy independence.
Sunil Jain, a founding partner at Sundev Renewables LLP, an advisory firm and a budding renewable project developer, said India needs to invest in capital goods manufacturing for the clean energy industry to shield itself from any geopolitical disruptions.
Should tensions rise, India would still be dependent on skilled personnel and parts to run their machines, Jain said. This would keep the country vulnerable, he said.
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