India: Growing Demand for Vacuum Tube Technology

Source: MNRE up to and including 2013-2014, market survey by Jaideep Malaviya 2014-2015 and 2015-2016

As with the financial year before, Malaviya estimated the market volume of vacuum tube systems based on the number of tubes imported under all four HS codes (see the table below).

This number added up to 7,011,134 from all four Harmonised System (HS) codes, including imported tube parts and tubes in assembled systems. Most of these tubes have a diameter of 47 mm, a length of 1,800 mm and an active surface area of 0.133 m², which results in a total tube area of 932,480 m² for 2015-2016. The factor to convert vacuum tube into gross collector area is 1.5, which means that the around 7 million imported tubes correspond to around 1,398,721 m². A small percentage of around 2 % of imports was for non-solar thermal applications.

	HS Code
Month	84191920	84199090	84199010	84191910
Apr 15	19,990		170,039
May 15		5,344	207,651
June 15		13,675	199,729	13,400
July 15		126,664	127,438
Aug 15	1,300	140,724	184,963
Sep 15	24,844	217,634	199,917	18,000
Oct 15		65,314	408,340	19,350
Nov 15		242,063	273,295	2,000
Dec 15		164,331	527,856	26,400
Jan 16	6,720	130,070	604,681	13,040
Feb 16		249,634	416,763	1,759,256
Mar 16	13,760	207,672	209,277
	66,614	1,563,125	3,529,949	1,851,446

Data on vacuum tubes imported to India under various HS codes during 2015-2016
Source: Import statistics of Legumex Impex (www.zauba.com)

A brief survey among some of the leading flat plate collector manufacturers has revealed that their overall business had either gone down or had them barely sustaining, which means a lot of importers have been entering the market in the meantime. Locally produced flat plate collectors were a niche market in 2015-2016, with only 172,000 m² of those having been installed across the country.

There is also the overall feeling that plenty of sub-standard solar water heaters have penetrated the market. A strict enforcement of quality standards is urgently needed and the ones already devised by the Bureau of Indian Standards should be enforced immediately and become mandatory in order to ensure that only high-quality systems are shipped from abroad.

Electricity prices are still on the rise and solar collectors have proved themselves as the best energy-saving device for domestic water heating. Under these circumstances, the market is likely to witness an increase over the coming decade and with growing demand for vacuum tubes, domestic manufacturing should become viable and the industry should be taking full advantage of the incentives by the current government’s Make in India programme.