Solar manufacturer Renaissance Solar and Electronic Materials (RSOLEC), with operations in India and the United States, has announced it would set up a 5 GW silicon crystal and wafer manufacturing facility in India with an investment of $300 million.

The location for the manufacturing facility has not been finalized yet. The project will be commissioned by the end of 2025.

For the upcoming five years, the company’s focus will revolve around crystal growth and wafer manufacturing activities within India. In the long term, RSOLEC has plans to broaden its manufacturing operations across the entire solar value chain.

The facility will employ the Recharge Czochralski process, which can be adapted for the emerging Continuous Czochralski process for crystal growth. Wafer production will be based on the DCW platform, capable of producing thin wafers with a thickness of less than 100 micrometers.

The primary product to be manufactured will be high-quality silicon wafers characterized by low oxygen content, extended lifetime, and controlled resistivity. These wafers will be compatible with various solar cell technologies, including TOPCon, PERC, HJT, and Tandem structures.

Speaking to Mercom, Milind Kulkarni, Chairman and CEO of RSOLEC, said, “We are starting with silicon crystals and wafers. The entire value chain has three nodes: polysilicon, ingots (crystals) & wafers, and cells & modules. We have looked at the techno-commercial case for each node and decided to start with silicon crystals and wafers. Initially, we will start with 5 GW, and as per our roadmap, we plan to take it to 9 GW by 2030. Our main goal is to achieve 20 G W by 2031-32. There are quite a few attractive locations, but we have not finalized it yet. At this stage, we can’t disclose the location.”

About funding for the projects, he said, “Our funding will come from India and the U.S. We are also having talks with strategic investors. It’s a combination of institutional investors as well as strategic investors.”

“Our commissioning will be complete by the end of 2025, and the first product will be out by early 2026. Initially, it will be silicon crystals and wafers. After 2030, we will take a call on whether to vertically integrate cells and modules. Our vertically integrated downstream and upstream production will happen only after 2030,” Kulkarni added.

The company’s strategic plan envisions achieving a capital efficiency of less than $35 million per GW.

Recently, India-based solar module maker Waaree Energies raised ₹10 billion (~$120.8 million) in a second round of equity funding led by ValueQuest, a boutique portfolio management company, to help expand its existing manufacturing capacity by 6 GW. The additional capacity will include manufacturing solar ingots, wafers, cells, and modules.

Earlier, Adani Solar had introduced India’s first large monocrystalline silicon ingot at its Mundra facility. The company completed the backward integration of the ingot line infrastructure in seven months. Adani Solar plans to increase its ingot and wafer capacity by 2 GW by the end of 2023 and to further increase production to 10 GW by 2025.