Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

The Chinese manufacturer is holding out hope a boom that is expected to start imminently will help it turnaround losses that forced it to issue a profit warning last week. Getting its new production line in Qujing up to speed will help, provided the demand materializes.

A new test design from the University of Central Florida has challenged modules with different cell technologies. The results show advantages for the heterojunction modules tested. Here we discuss the new method with its designer.

The Shanghai-based solar manufacturer has maintained gross margin in a depressed domestic market by shipping ever more modules around the world and is pressing ahead with dramatic production plans on the eve of a looming solar boom.

The Chinese company is ramping up R&D efforts to try and fast-track commercialization of the more productive – and more expensive – battery tech. The news was announced as part of an uninspiring first-half update thanks to falling lithium salt prices.

The Chinese giant has argued its 166mm M6 product should be the new iteration used worldwide, even though larger products have been launched by rivals. Longi says the fact existing cell and module production lines can be adapted for the M6 means rising demand for solar worldwide can be swiftly satisfied.

The solar manufacturer today moved to reassure investors ahead of what promises to be another rocky set of first-half figures in two days’ time. The Hong Kong company says it wants to add another 3.6 GW of mono ingot and wafer capacity by early 2021.

While the damage is largely done for cells, modules and inverters, increased tariffs on U.S. module components and 15% measures on lithium-ion batteries are not good news for either sector.

Bidders interested in competing for a tender which will allocate 6 GW of solar capacity linked, pro rata, with 2 GW of manufacturing output now have until September 11 to register their bid as administrator the Solar Energy Corporation of India will amend the exercise to incorporate developer feedback.

With the anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed in November 2013 set to expire nine months ago, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal has extended them for another five years, ruling their expiry would harm the nation’s only domestic manufacturer.

A binational integrated solar industry project, announced just over a year ago, aims to build a vertically integrated solar manufacturing industry along the border between Brazil and Paraguay. But the project is now on hold pending an update and reassessment by its new managers.