Mark Osborne provides a detailed analysis of First Solar’s technology and manufacturing strategy, examining its production transition issues to date and the company’s product efficiency roadmap.
‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member First Solar has reported full-year PV module shipments of 5.5GW in 2020, generating net sales of US$2.7 billion.
A European Commission-backed project has been launched to scale up Europe’s PV manufacturing industry and capture the continent’s “booming demand” for solar equipment.
Panasonic has announced plans to withdraw from manufacturing heterojunction (HJT) cells and modules with the closure of its manufacturing plants in Malaysia and Shimane Prefecture, Japan.
PV-Tech’s flagship PV ModuleTech conference returns, through an online platform, on 9-11 March 2021, with a focus on providing utility-scale site developers and investors a comprehensive understanding of the new module formats being sold to the market today.
‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member First Solar has sold a large part of its PV project business to Leeward Renewable Energy totalling around 10GW.
LPKF Laser & Electronics has secured its first laser solar scribing system order from a CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) thin film customer worth around US$12.2 million.
With module suppliers currently seeking to hit annual shipment volume guidance for 2020, and many announcing ambitious expansion plans for 2021 and beyond, the sector is seeing a shift now in terms of module supply to global utility-scale sites.
‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member First Solar is undertaking capacity expansions at its two existing manufacturing plants in Ohio, while evaluating several new international locations to grow its global module sales business as initial Series 6 CdTe thin film module expansion plans come to an end, effectively becoming capacity constrained again from 2021, onwards.
