Panasonic arm will focus on energy technology

In an interview, Amit Barve, head of solar business, Panasonic Life Solutions India, said it will soon launch its first B2C product, a solar power kit for residential customers.

“It is (energy storage solutions) the natural progression of what we will see. Domestic residential kits are the first variant. The next step would be to make it hybrid so that it has the capability of working on-grid as well as off-grid using battery as a storage medium. We are already working on a couple of demo sites for our storage systems, where we are including batteries as an essential part of the residential kit,” Barve said.

“We are focused on smaller applications, (for) the residential side and we want to introduce it for C&I market as well, where we are doing solar EPC projects,” he added.

Panasonic Life’s solar business deals in EPC projects for its C&I customers and supplies solar modules through original equipment manufacturers (OEM). It is trying to expand its export market, too.

In 2021 the company started exporting solar modules made in India to Turkey and is now a major supplier to South-East Asian countries. “We started with Turkey as our first major export destination for the solar modules. We have reached five-six countries in ASEAN,” he said, adding the company aims to expand its exports to Europe, North America and Latin America.

Exports constitute 25% of its total sales. “Around 25% of our entire business this year has come from exports, the rest is domestic. We will be improving our export business, so that it makes more than one-third of our business,” he said.

Barve said supply concerns have somewhat eased leading to better module prices.

“Raw material was climbing for the last two years which was never seen in the solar sector. However, raw material value chain is getting back to normal with a very significant expansion in polysilicon manufacturing, wafer capacity as well as ingot capacity. We are seeing the first signs of prices stabilizing or even falling to a certain extent in the last 2-3 weeks.”

The government’s focus on developing a local solar module manufacturing ecosystem with production-linked incentives, will help domestic manufacturing to pick up pace in the next few years, he added.