The world’s second largest maker of blank CDs and DVDs is an Indian company named Moser Baer; it has recently diversified into selling (and some instances producing) movies and also launched a solar photo-voltaic business. Located near New Delhi the company is venture and private equity funded.
Its unit, Moser Baer Clean Energy Ltd, has just commissioned the country’s largest solar plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The 5 megawatt, $20 million plant uses amorphous silicon Thin Film technology, best suited to the Indian climatic conditions, and is connected to the 110 KVA local grid. The project was awarded by the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency, a state entity and is being implemented under the Generation Based Incentive scheme of the India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy.
India hopes to develop 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 but the largest plants operating so far were only 2-3 megawatt capacity. Solar and wind energy are still subsidized to some extent by public funding.
