Major PV manufacturing equipment supplier Meyer Burger has secured a CHF29 million (US$29.5 million) order from Swiss/Hungarian silicon thin-film equipment and technology firm EcoSolifer for a 90-100MW heterojunction (HJ) solar cell line.
Recently it was reported that Ecosolifer was planning an 80MW module assembly plant in Brazil, using its proprietary amorphous silicon deposition technology on monocrystalline wafers produced at its plant in Csorna, Hungary.
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Meyer Burger said that the order was won after an extensive six-month technical evaluation process. The HJ cell line equipment would be delivered to EcoSolifer’s plant in Hungary in late 2015. EcoSolifer plans to begin industrial manufacturing in the first quarter 2016.
Meyer Burger CEO Peter Pauli said: “With our future-oriented integrated photovoltaic technologies, Meyer Burger is ideally positioned to support EcoSolifer in combating the shortage of high efficiency solar modules in the photovoltaic market. This is the beginning of important ongoing joint development in the European and global markets.”
The initial contract is for CHF23 million (US$23.4 million) and includes Meyer Burger’s integrated cell performance measurement and sorting technology and a ‘FabEagle’ MES (Manufacturing Execution System) as well as comprehensive customer training and support services.
The complete contract includes an option for the future delivery of Meyer Burger’s SmartWire Connection Technology (SWCT).
EcoSolifer CEO Dr Ákos Haidegger added: “The combination of Meyer Burger’s high efficiency bifacial heterojunction cell technology with EcoSolifer’s broad know-how in PV development and industrial scale production capability could trigger an extraordinarily dynamic impulse and influence the entire solar market.”
EcoSolifer was said to have plans to expand capacity to 500MW in the ‘short-term’.
As Meyer Burger would have secured a sizable deposit for the equipment order and the fact the delivery schedule was also detailed, means the capacity expansion announcements total in July, 2015 is around 3.68GW.
This would also mean that the plans by EcoSolifer would meet ‘meaningful’ status, bringing July’s meaningful capacity addition figure to around 390MW out of the 3.68GW total of capacity announcements in the month.