Tata Power will set up a ₹6,675-crore, 10 GW ingot-and-wafer manufacturing plant at Gopalpur, Odisha, choosing the eastern state over Andhra Pradesh after evaluating the incentives and infrastructure support on offer, including lower power costs. The company had earlier been reported to be in talks with the Odisha government on the facility. According to Praveer Sinha, CEO & MD of Tata Power, the decision was driven by the type of incentives and support being extended by the state. The project also benefited from ready land availability at Gopalpur, where a group company, Tata Steel, is developing a special economic zone, with the land already acquired enabling the company to move ahead quickly. The plant will be commissioned in two phases of 5 GW each, with the first phase expected to begin operations in January 2028 and the second phase about six months later. Tata Power is a large, diversified power utility with generation, transmission, distribution and renewable energy businesses across India, and this ingot-and-wafer facility is part of its push into upstream solar manufacturing to support its renewable energy and solar module ambitions. A plant of this scale would typically require equipment such as polysilicon melting and crystal-growing furnaces, ingot-casting and cropping/squaring systems, multi-wire wafer slicing machines, wafer cleaning and inspection lines, and automated material handling and quality-testing systems.