In the year 2018, India installed 8.3 GW (giga watt) of solar PV capacity with China leading the way with 44.3GW and the US coming in second at 10.6GW.India finished a close third ahead of Japan and Germany who finished fourth and fifth respectively.

This data is based on green energy market tracker Mercom Capital's latest report.

India came out as the third-largest solar PV (photo-voltaic) market in the world, with the country's top 10 companies responsible for more than 60 per cent of all large-scale project installations in the 2018 calendar year.

TThe report said that more than 300 utility - scale project developers in India were in operation with projects of at least 5 MW or more. At present, there are approximately 80 large-scale project developers with a pipeline of 5 MW (mega watt) or more in India.

Raj Prabhu ,CEO of Mercom Capital said "Much has changed in the Indian solar industry over the last year. There was some re-shuffling when it came to suppliers after the imposition of the safeguard duty while others have consolidated their positions".

In 2018, ACME Solar was the leading developer of solar utilities. At the end of the year, it also had the largest project pipeline, followed closely by SB Energy (SoftBank) and Azure Power.

By the end of 2018, the Adani Group maintained its position as the largest developer of all cumulative installations.It was also the second largest solar installer on a utility scale in 2018.

In 2018, CleanMax Solar emerged as the top solar rooftop installer followed by Fourth Partner Energy, while Tata Power still has the largest solar rooftop cumulative installations.

The Mercom report said only 30% of the installed capacity in India in 2018 was covered by the top 10 rooftop solar installers. Other developers on the rooftops made up 70% of the market.

Sterling and Wilson emerged as the top player in the EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) segment.