Reliance announces Giga Factory for power electronics

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, on Monday said the company will be setting up a Giga Factory for photovoltaic panels, energy storage, green hydrogen and for fuel cell systems.

“Today, I would like to announce our new Giga Factory for power electronics. One of the key components linking the entire value chain of green energy is affordable and reliable power electronics,” Ambani says at the 45th annual general meeting of RIL.

“We are building significant capabilities in design and manufacturing of power electronics and software systems, integrating with our capabilities of Telecommunications, Cloud Computing and IoT platform,” he says, adding that the company will build this through partnerships with leading global players to provide most affordable solutions, meeting global standards of performance, safety, and reliability.

This comes a year after Ambani announced the setting up of Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar. “Our aim is to establish and enable at least 100GW of solar energy by 2030. The work done so far has reaffirmed my conviction in solar energy and has provided further impetus to our investment thesis to establish four Giga Factories,” says Ambani.

In addition to solar energy, we are also actively progressing on bio-energy, offshore wind and other non-conventional forms of renewable energy, and will continue to expand our manufacturing ecosystem, Ambani says.

“We have invested and partnered with leading companies globally in areas of solar, battery and electrolysers. With each of these partnerships, we gained access to unique technology, know-how, and an eager and vibrant talent pool, ready to disrupt the world,” he adds.

For solar PV manufacturing, we have acquired 100% stake in REC Solar. REC is expanding its current 1.2 gigawatt (GW) annual module production capacity to 1.8GW in Singapore.

“The technology for solar PV is constantly evolving... We also aim to extend the life of PV modules from 25 to 50 years. Our 10GW solar PV cell and module factory at Jamnagar, based on REC technology, will commence production by 2024. And we are targeting to scale up to 20GW annual capacity in a phased manner by 2026,” says Ambani.

Ambani sees batteries as an integral part of providing long-duration energy storage for grid-scale renewable energy. “We have formed strategic partnerships with Lithium Werks, Faradion and Ambri, each of them being an industry disruptor with superior chemistry, leading to better performance,” he says.

The company aims to start production of battery packs by 2023 and scale up to a fully integrated 5 GWh annual cell to pack manufacturing facility by 2024, and further scale up to 50 GWh annual capacity by 2027.

“Reliance's captive energy requirement across businesses provides us with a large base-load demand to support our plans to set up giga-scale manufacturing. It will accelerate our commitment to invest ₹75,000 crore towards establishing our fully integrated New Energy manufacturing ecosystem in Jamnagar,” says India’s second richest person.

“We will also be establishing 20 GW of solar energy generation capacity by 2025. This will be entirely consumed for our captive needs of round-the-clock (RTC) power and intermittent energy for Green Hydrogen. Once proven at scale, we are prepared to double the investment to scale up our manufacturing ecosystem,” he adds.

India's second richest man said his youngest son Anant has joined the company's new energy business with great zeal. "In fact, he is spending most of his time in Jamnagar," Ambani says.