Reliance New Energy Solar to fund $29 mn in German firm Nexwafe

Reliance Industries (RIL) subsidiary Reliance New Energy Solar (RNESL) will invest $29 million in Germany’s NexWafe GmbH.

According to a statement given by the company on October 12, RNESL will be the vital lead investor for the German firm's 39 million euros Series C financing round.

The RIL firm has agreed with NexWafe, a firm that provides high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon wafers, to obtain 86,887 series C approved shares at 287.73 euros apiece. RNESL will also be declared 36,201 warrants which are exercisable for a sum of 1 euro each subject to fulfilment of agreed milestones, the firm said in an exchange filing.

NexWafe has a proprietary technology that can significantly lessen the price of manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) cells. The firm statement says that the technology can create solar photovoltaics, the lowest-cost form of renewable energy possible. The technology is to improve and build monocrystalline silicon wafers from inexpensive raw materials, going directly from the gas phase to finished wafers without the expensive and energy-intensive intermediate steps, as per the filing.

RIL plans to leverage NexWafe’s technology to install giga-scale wafer production plants in India, to help the domestic and the global markets. Reliance and NexWafe have entered into an India Strategic Partnership Agreement for joint development and commercialisation at a scale of high-efficiency, monocrystalline green solar wafers.

It is yet another move by RIL towards attaining the aim it has set for itself of producing 100GW of renewable energy (or 22% of the national goal) by 2030. Reliance is funding Rs 75,000 crore over the coming three years in renewable energy, comprising the installation of gigafactories in a 5,000-acre, integrated complex named Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

The complex is likely to have an integrated solar photovoltaic module plant for the generation of solar energy, an advanced energy storage battery factory for the storage of intermittent energy, an electrolyser factory to generate green hydrogen and a fuel-cell factory to transform hydrogen into motive and stationary power. It will also house infrastructure to produce ancillary material and tools for the gigafactories.

RIL is in the process of modifying its energy and materials businesses. At the firm's annual general meeting in June, the conglomerate’s chairman and managing director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani had explained their idea for their new energy business--first via hyper-integration, of scientific knowledge and technological innovation, following by building a business model that grabs the upward curve in demand for clean energy and downward curve in production cost, and third by working on increasing efficiency of assets and operations.

In the past few days, the firm has made purchases and partnerships that follow that vision.

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