Solar exports at crossroads: How US probe on imports can impact Indian players? – Industry News

In the wake of the US Department of Commerce initiating a countervailing duty probe on imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells from three countries – India, Indonesia, and Laos- India’s solar industry is poised at a critical juncture.

An analysis by a research house, Care Edge Rating, indicated that any adverse action taken by the United States against Indian solar PV module manufacturers will impact their export volumes and margins significantly.

Government subsidy the big worry?

In the petition to the US Department of Commerce, the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade claimed that the Indian, Indonesian, and Laos governments are giving financial subsidies to solar cell producers in their countries. And it is these subsidies that are harming or threatening to harm US companies that make solar cells. 

The US Department of Commerce has named 43 Indian solar PV module manufacturers in its investigation and plans to follow its usual process in countervailing duty investigations by calculating subsidy rates for individual companies. 

Sabyasachi Majumdar, Senior Director, CareEdge Ratings pointed out that though Indian companies do benefit from policy incentives such as PLI across the solar module value chain, amounting to about Rs 18,000 crore for a cumulative capacity of about 50 GW but “a large part of the 18.6 GW module capacity became operational only over  2024-2025, thus, the benefits of the same would be limited to the aforesaid period. 

Furthermore, while trade barriers such as BCD on Chinese cells and modules and ALMM-I for domestic modules provide a level playing field for the Indian manufacturers, against Chinese imports, the benefits are largely seen in the domestic market. Thus, it remains to be seen as to how these subsidies are perceived by the International Trade Commission.”

The big China factor

Indian players have started partially diversifying their supply chains away from Chinese origins by sourcing a part of their raw materials requirements, such as wafers and cells, from non-Chinese nations. Still a sizeable portion of cell imports continues to be from China. 

As per Majumdar, “the Chinese imports are deployed in the Indian market itself, and  Indian players maintain that they are not selling modules below cost in the US market.”

This is also corroborated by the US govt data, which suggests that the realisations on Indian modules in 2024 were around 35 cents (as against 23 cents for Indonesia and 18 cents for Laos). 

Care Edge Ratings explained that while the final action taken by the US Department of Commerce against Indian solar PV manufacturers remains to be seen, the result of the investigation is unlikely to come out before the end of the current financial year- FY26. 

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