Waaaree Energies Plans To Start Solar Cell Manufacturing From Dec

Waaaree Energies Plans To Start Solar Cell Manufacturing From Dec

Waaree Energies, a Mumbai-based solar manufacturing company, has set mid-December as the deadline for commissioning its solar cell production facility. The company stated that work is in its final stages to begin operations at its Chikhli plant in Gujarat, where it had earlier invested in setting up the cell line.

During the latest investors’ call, the company’s top management provided an update on the facility’s progress. “We have a 5.4 gigawatts of cell capacity in Chikhli that is coming up again as we speak. Solar cells, you know, the 5.4 gigawatts as we talked about, we are actually commissioning the cell facility at this point in time. Dry runs of the cells have begun. We should be having commercial operations commencing, I would say, middle of December,” said Amit Paithankar, CEO of Waaree Energies.

11 GW Solar Cell Capacity by 2027

The 5.4 GW solar cell plant in Chikhli is part of Waaree’s broader expansion plans, which also include a 6 GW integrated solar cell, ingot, and wafer production facility in Odisha. The company expects the Odisha plant to become operational by the end of 2027. Paithankar, expressing confidence in the company’s capacity growth, projected that Waaree’s solar cell capacity will reach approximately 11 GW by the end of 2027.

The management also discussed plans to commission its U.S.-based solar module manufacturing plant by February next year. This timeline coincides with the appointment of Donald Trump as the new President of the United States, who is set to take office in January.

US Manufacturing Plan

“In 2025, as we end the year, we will be having 13.3 gigawatts in India, 1.6 in the U.S., so that will make it a total of 15 gigawatts by the end of this financial year. And by the end of financial year ‘27, in India, we will be having 21 gigawatts of module capacity and 11 gigawatts of cell capacity. And then, of course, you can add to that the module capacity and the cell capacity that will potentially get added in the United States,” Paithankar shared during the call.

The company is buoyed by a robust order book of 20 GW. In the first half of FY25, it delivered 3.3 GW of orders, compared to 4.8 GW fulfilled during the entirety of FY24.

Want to know about Waaree Energies’s plants in Indian solar market. Watch our video interview (dated Oct 3, 2024) with Mr Paithankar here-