The figure includes both manufacturing funding (upstream) and project funding (downstream) investments.
Kolkata: Overall investments in Indian solar sector dropped by no less than 12 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of the CY 2019. However, quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) investment in the sector went up quite significantly, by 55 per cent, in the same quarter. In Q1, CY19, Indian solar sector received investments totaling $2.8 billion (nearly Rs 195.4 billion), down 12 per cent from $3.17 billion (nearly Rs 221.2 billion) received in Q1 2018, according to Mercom's Q1 2019 India Solar Market Quarterly Update. The figure includes both manufacturing funding (upstream) and project funding (downstream) investments.
Investments increased by 55 per cent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) when compared to $1.81 billion (nearly Rs 126.3 billion) invested in the Indian solar sector in Q4 2018. This can primarily be attributed to a substantial surge in corporate funding, of nearly $800 million (Rs 56 billion) in Q1 2019. The amount of corporate funding in solar sector in Q4, 2018 was $217 million (Rs15 billion). The total investments in downstream activity reached almost $989 million (nearly Rs 69.04 billion), up by 4 per cent compared to $951 million (Rs 66.3 billion) in Q4 2018.
When it comes to domestic manufacturing expansion, domestic manufacturers like Vikram Solar, Renewsys India, Saatvik Green Energy, Super Sun Solar, and Shivam Photovoltaic -all increased their manufacturing capacities by close to 1 GW. Indian manufacturers are actually doing better after the imposition of safeguard duty on imported modules from China and Malaysia, Mercom Study said.
Interestingly, in CY 2018, investments in the Indian solar sector totalled $9.8 billion compared to 2017, in which almost $11.5 billion flowed into the Indian solar sector. CY 2018 witnessed a decline of 15 per cent in investments YoY primarily due to decline in solar installations. At the end of Q1 2019, India's installed solar capacity stood at nearly 30 GW.