India's largest cell plant opens at 7GW, built for $343 million

Serguey Asael Shinder21 September 2026, 07:582 min read

Premier Energies has commissioned a 7 GW solar cell plant at Naidupeta in Andhra Pradesh, bringing the company's total cell capacity to 10.6 GW and making it India's largest cell manufacturer by that measure. Trial production has started. The report is at https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/21/premier-energies-commissions-indias-largest-solar-cell-facility/.

The numbers are unusually specific for a factory announcement. The line makes n-type TOPCon G12R cells and is targeting an average efficiency of about 25.8% once stabilised and ramped. It covers 40 hectares, cost INR 3,293 crore — about $343.7 million — and is designed to produce roughly 88,000 cells per hour. The company says it was commissioned on schedule and within budget, and that the plant can be upgraded to later TOPCon variants including poly-finger metallisation and advanced edge isolation.

What it means

Cells, not modules, is the part of the chain India has been missing. Module assembly is comparatively easy to stand up and India has plenty; cells are where the capital, the process control and the yield risk live. A domestic 7 GW cell line changes what a module made in India is actually made of, which is the question every local-content rule in the country is ultimately asking.

$343.7 million for 7 GW is about $49 per kilowatt of annual capacity, and that figure is the one worth carrying around. It is the price of the factory, not of the panels it produces, and it sets the floor under how fast this capacity can be replicated — by this company or by the next one raising money against the same rule.

The efficiency target is the claim to watch. A stabilised average of 25.8% on n-type TOPCon is a credible number today rather than an aspirational one, but "targeting after stabilisation and ramp-up" is doing real work in that sentence. Cell lines are judged on the gap between the design figure and the twelve-month average, and that gap is where the economics of the whole plant sits.