SunEdison, Adani Enterprises to build $4bn solar factory in India

Renewable energy company SunEdison and Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises will work together to build the largest solar panel factory in India, according to reports.

The Gujarat solar plant would provide a major boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plan to roll out 100GW of solar capacity by 2022, a 33-fold increase on current levels.

SunEdison and the Indian billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani attended the Vibrant Gujarat business summit on Sunday and announced they would jointly invest US$4 billion in the new facility.

Ahmad Chatila, president and chief executive SunEdison, said: "This facility will create ultra-low cost solar panels that will enable us to produce electricity so cost effectively it can compete head to head, unsubsidized and without incentives, with fossil fuels.”

Details of the project are still being finalised, but the facility is expected to be operational within three years and will employ up to 20,000 people.

Adani Enterprises has also announced a new memorandum of understanding with Australia's Woodside Petroleum to research the sourcing of liquefied natural gas in a bid to support government efforts to reduce India's reliance on fossil fuels.

SunEdison announced plans in 2014 to team up with TerraForm Power to acquire US wind energy developer First Wind in a US$2.4 billion deal.

The news was followed last month by the announcement that SunEdison will invest around US$350 million in 350MW of solar power plants in Chile as part of an agreement to provide the country's National Energy Commission with 570GWh of renewable energy a year.

The company claimed that electricity generated by its solar photovoltaic power plants is now 10 per cent to 25 per cent more cost effective than electricity generated by fossil fuels in Chile.

The news comes days after Bloomberg New Energy Finance research found that plummeting costs and soaring investment across the global solar sector were the driving force behind a 16 per cent increase in clean energy investment last year to US$310 billion.