Thursday, November 14, 2013: With Union and State governments planning mega expansion projects for solar energy, ABB India is considering increasing its presence in the space drastically. Experts feel that with the rising prices of oil and coal, solar energy will be an affordable and sustainable source of energy.
As per the National Solar Mission, India is expected to have solar energy capacity of 10,000 MW by 2017, which will go up to 20,000 MW by the year 2022. At present, the country has a solar power generating capacity of 2,100 MW, with 4,000 MW in the pipeline. This was shared by Tarun Kapoor, Joint Secretary, Ministry of New And Renewable Energy.
Ajay Kawdikar, Vice-President, Country Solar, ABB India, told The Hindu, “Solar energy is getting more acceptability and the growth has been very high since the past three years. There is huge opportunity ahead, and we are poised to leverage that opportunity. We are gearing up to provide turnkey solutions for our clients in India.”
“We are very committed to solar energy, and this is evident from the fact that ABB recently invested $1 billion to acquire U.S.-based Power-One Inc. which has enormous capability in the solar power domain,” he added.
Kawdikar was attending Intersolar 2013, a trade show. He said, “We are quite upbeat about the potential of solar energy in India, and our order book position is healthy. We have cumulative orders of 500 MW and we are looking for more.”
He also shared that many loyal customers of ABB were moving into the solar segment space and were opting for their solutions. “We are operating in India for the last five decades, and we have the best of technology available. Most of our solar customers are existing customers,” he added.
ABB also announced the inauguration of two new facilities to produce power products in India. These units are located in Savli, which is close to the Vadodara facility. They will be producing high-voltage switchgear and distribution transformers.
