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Trina Solar will invest US$500 million in building a solar PV production facility with Welspun Energy in India. The facility’s production capacity will reach 2GW, and the products will be shipped to the U.S. and Europe to circumvent the current trade barriers.
Bloomberg reports that the 2GW facility will be in either the state of Gujarat or of Andhra Pradesh. The target markets were revealed by Zhiguo Zhu, senior vice president of Trina Solar, in a phone interview with Bloomberg.
This May, Jifan Gao, Chairman and CEO of Trina Solar, was invited to join in a meet between Prime Minister Narendra Modin and leaders of Chinese manufacturing and economic industry. Gao has signed an MOU with Welspun Energy to build a 1GW PV cell manufacturing facility and a 1GW module facility. Trina Solar also planned to construct a solar park in India on the basis of its experience and resources in the solar industry.
Earlier this year, Trina Solar has announced to establish a 700MW PV cell manufacturing facility and a 500MW module production line in Thailand. With the new plant in India, Trina Solar will be added by at least 1GW of cell production capacity and lead the global PV cell producers. In addition, the products produced in both Thailand and India will be tariff-free to export into the U.S. and European market, EnergyTrend hence expects Trina Solar to meet higher revenue in the second half of 2015.
India’s Attraction
Prime Minister Modi’s energy polices have been turning India into one of the most attractive markets to global solar manufacturers and investors. The government aims to install 175GW of alternative energy capacity by 2022. The aim of solar installations is 100GW, while 40GW are allocated to be distributed generation systems.
Trina Solar expects that demand from India could reach 600MW this year. “Next year, India will become our third-largest market,” said Zhu. “In future, it could become our biggest after China.”
Trina Solar is not the only global manufacturer which enters into India. SunEdison has teamed with India’s Adani Group to co-invest US$2 billion in establishing a joint venture for further development in the nation.