Trina Solar begins producing 210 mm wafers at 6.5 GW Vietnam facility

Trina Solar‘s US unit has revealed that it started operating the 6.5 GW silicon wafer factory in the city of Thai Nguyen, 80 kilometers north of Hanoi, Vietnam. The company announced the new facility last January, after the US Department of Commerce (DoC) determined in December 2022 that solar cell and module imports from Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand were circumventing antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) orders on cell and module imports from China. Trina said that this new capacity would be used to exclusively supply its operations in the US utility, C&I, and residential solar markets.

Trina Solar began producing 210 mm monocrystalline wafers for Vertex Modules in Vietnam last week. “Wafers produced will be primarily used in cell and module production at Trina Solar’s sites in Vietnam and Thailand, including Trina’s supply to the U.S. market,” the company states.

In addition to the new factory’s wafer production capacity of 6.5 GW, it has a cell capacity of 4 GW and a module capacity of 5 GW. The silicon wafer factory includes ingot pulling, machine processing, slicing, and silicon processing.

Last May, Trina Solar announced it signed an agreement with an unspecified state-owned entity of Shifang City, Sichuan province in China, to build a 25 GW monocrystalline ingot factory in the area.