Friday, October 01, 2013: Counted among the giants in the Indian solar industry, Tata Power Solar Systems Ltd operates in three areas of business. The first is as an EPC player, building projects ranging from the kW scale to very large ones of 100 MW or more. Its products business includes home lighting products, power packs, lanterns, etc, and it also manufactures modules and cells at its Bengaluru facility. It has a module capacity of 125 MW and cell capacity of 180 MW.
After the exit of BP Solar, Tata Power Solar is focusing on its exports business with renewed vigour, with special emphasis on Europe and USA. In a conversation with Richa Chakravarty of Electronics Bazaar,Rahul Budhwar, vice president, manufacturing and business development, Tata Power Solar, discusses BP Solar’s exit from the joint venture (JV), as well as its marketing strategies, future plans and upcoming projects.
EB: How has the exit of BP from the JV impacted Tata Power Solar?
BP was a great company to be associated with. In the joint venture, Tata BP Solar, BP was largely a go-to-market channel in the international markets for products manufactured in India. Post BP’s exit, Tata Power Solar increased its focus on building its expertise across various functions to become a world-class integrated solar solutions provider. We are working towards building our export channel with renewed vigour and emphasis on the Europe and US markets. With Tata Power Solar’s legacy, product quality, cost competitiveness and bankability, we are confident that we will do well in all our focus segments, including international markets.
EB: Where do you see demand for your products coming from?
As far as the global scenario is concerned, Tata Power Solar is seeing good traction in the European market. Back in the domestic market, we have a pan-India presence, and the demand is not specific to any region. However, both the government and private commercial establishments are triggering the demand due to increased traction in the adoption of solar power. Along with the Central government’s solar policy, the states’ policies are also creating good demand.
EB: What are the projects Tata Power Solar executed this year? Are there any new projects in the pipeline?
Tata Power Solar has bagged a 50MW project for NTPC in Rajgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and a 30MW project for Tata Power in Satara, Maharashtra. Currently, we have over 100MW worth of orders that are under various stages of execution and will be completed in the current financial year. Our plan is to continue executing these projects on time and within budget, while maintaining the same momentum going forward.
EB: What manufacturing best practices do you follow?
Tata Power Solar focuses a lot on forward planning, procurement and the supply chain, ensuring that we procure the right quality inputs at the right price and at the right time. We believe in developing a win-win relationship with our suppliers. The quality of our products is an area where we strongly focus on, as our customers expect a combination of good quality and price, and we have numerous checks and tests in place to ensure this. Tata Power Solar has a lean manufacturing set-up with both manual and automated lines, as a combination of both leads to high quality products providing output flexibility. We also ensure on-time delivery of our products, and to do so, we strictly ensure that there are no shortfalls in stocks.
EB: Who are your target customers?
For our exports business, we are making efforts to reach out to potential customers in specific geographies, especially the European and US markets. For our EPC/projects business, we work with developers and companies through our large sales and delivery teams. For our products business, we have a large dealer and distributor network, which enables us to reach retail customers across the country.
EB: Do you offer any schemes for the end users?
For our corporate customers, we have designed various financing schemes that are quite attractive. They can choose to pay per unit of solar energy that is generated or purchase the system on a leasing scheme. We also support retail customers by educating them about the benefits of certain government programs and schemes, and even help them in availing these benefits. We also enable our customers in rural areas to get bank loans for solar products.
EB: What are Tata Power Solar’s future plans?
Tata Power Solar wants to grow across all facets of solar solutions: manufacturing, EPC and solar products. We strive towards reducing our conversion cost and increasing our capacities to address the Indian as well as international markets. We intend to expand our manufacturing capacity and strengthen our capabilities as and when required. We also intend to rapidly grow our project order book and continue to work towards empowering people with non-subsidised solar-powered products that are innovative and cost effective, like SunJeevini, a unique retrofit unit that allows conventional inverter batteries to be charged through solar power.
EB: What, according to you, were the drawbacks of JNNSM Phase I?
JNNSM is a very visionary policy that has helped to give an impetus to the solar energy sector in India. However, we find the reverse auction mechanism for granting projects to be challenging, as you find that the bids that are made are not always rational and when the project has to be executed, there is a chance of quality being compromised. Ultimately, solar projects are intended to run for 25 years or more, and any compromise on quality can hurt the viability of the project and people’s faith in solar energy in the long term.
EB: Compared to China, how much more expensive is module manufacturing in India?
With regard to manufacturing, China has a very enabling environment. Chinese companies get a lot of government incentives, as well as support from local banks. As the manufacturing environment is conducive, a strong ecosystem of raw material suppliers has developed there, which helps further in timely deliveries and reduced logistics costs. However, we have put in a lot of effort into making our manufacturing competitive and can say that we are winning orders in various geographies.
EB: What do you expect from Phase-II of the Solar Mission?
Under JNNSM Phase II, Domestic Content Requirement (DCR) for cells and modules should help boost local manufacturing in India and ensure optimal capacity utilisation at Indian manufacturing facilities. It would also be helpful to have requisite qualifications like prior experience in executing solar projects, as this will ensure timely delivery and optimal performance of the plants after commissioning.
Electronics Bazaar, South Asia’s No.1 Electronics B2B magazine
