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On June 1, India's solar sector cleared a bar it set for itself years earlier. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy's ALMM List-II mandate for solar PV cells became legally binding. Any government-linked solar project commissioned from that date must use cells from manufacturers on MNRE's approved list, or the paperwork will not go through. No subsidy. No net metering approval. In a tender, the contract can get thrown out. Most countries building out solar at scale do not have a rule this strict. India built one, and just tightened it further.
It did not happen overnight, which is part of the point. The Approved List of Models and Manufacturers framework dates back to 2019, when MNRE grew tired of substandard or misrepresented panels entering subsidized projects. List-I covered finished modules. List-II, the one that just became mandatory, pushes the same scrutiny down to cells, the components sitting one layer below the solar panel. Getting onto that list is not quick. A manufacturer needs Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification under IS 14086 first, followed by sample testing at a BIS lab, then a factory inspection. The whole process can run close to a year. India has been developing this system for six years. Most of the Asia Pacific region is still figuring out where to start.
Some developers lobbied MNRE earlier this year for a delay, citing limited domestic cell capacity. MNRE refused, and confirmed in late May that the deadline would not move. Not every part of the industry wanted an extension in the first place. "Frequent policy reversals undermine credibility and weaken investor confidence," said Avinash Hiranandani, vice chairman and president of RenewSys India, a domestic solar cell manufacturer, arguing against any postponement.
That gap is becoming visible. On May 26, the Philippines' Department of Trade and Industry opened public consultation on its own version of the same idea: mandatory PS Mark and ICC certification covering solar modules, battery storage, inverters, charge controllers, and cables. Sixty-day comment period, enforcement expected by early 2028. It is, in effect, the Philippines arriving at a conclusion India reached in 2019, with the same diagnosis and roughly seven years behind.
This is not a coincidence, and it is not specific to one country. Solar markets have seen incredible growth, and the supply chain has grown faster than anyone can keep up with. Price competition draws in components of wildly uneven quality. In the Philippines, Meralco has publicly pushed for firmer inverter standards after finding installers using equipment that does not meet international specifications, including anti-islanding protection that is supposed to stop a system from backfeeding electricity into the grid during an outage, a real safety risk to utility line workers. Eventually, a regulator notices gaps and has to write rules to close them. India ran that sequence early and is now updating the next layer of it. The Philippines is only beginning the first lap.
As solar markets become more mature, the difference between regulatory compliance and voluntary standards becomes more important. Governments can set the minimum. Many commercial and industrial customers already evaluate contractors based on accreditation, engineering credentials and track record, and long term accountability well before any regulator gets involved..
What actually matters here, for anyone evaluating contractors or suppliers in Southeast Asia's solar market, is not which certification scheme applies or what it's called. It comes down to a simpler question: who was already operating at India's level of accountability before their own regulator caught up? Solaren Renewable Energy Solutions Corporation is a useful example. It is a commercial and industrial solar EPC in the Philippines that holds dual accreditation from the Philippine Department of Energy and the Philippine Contractors Accreditation Board, has completed more than 2,500 installations totaling over 100 megawatts, and was recognized with the Asian Power Award for Solar Power Project of the Year for the Philippines.
"Accreditation and credibility have mattered to us since we started this business, long before anyone made it a requirement," said Neil Pearce, Solaren's managing director. "The growth came because of that, not the other way around."
None of that was required by law. Solaren built it that way anyway, in a market that had not yet asked for it. That is close to the same standard ALMM now forces by law in India.
India got there first because it had to face the problem before its neighbors did. Component fraud and underperformance were costing Indian homeowners and developers real money for years before the MNRE built a framework to address them. The Philippines is a smaller, younger solar market, but it is several years behind on the regulatory side and still working out what its own version of that framework will require. The companies worth watching in the meantime are the ones that did not wait to be told.
The pages slugged ‘Brand Connect’ are equivalent to advertisements and are not written and produced by Forbes India journalists.
First Published: Jul 08, 2026, 11:42
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