Agenda

The new landscape for solar cell manufacturing in 2020 & trends impacting market-leaders

A new sub-set of cell-production dominant producers in China has now emerged (including Tongwei, Aiko, Runergy, Lu’an, Sumin, Uniex and Solarspace) with as much as 80GW of effective cell capacity by the end of 2020, mostly based on 5-10GW cell fab designs implemented in the past few years. During 2020, about 30-40% of all c-Si modules supplied globally are likely to use cells produced by one of these Chinese companies listed above. The trend to 10-20GW scale cell makers in China is now one of the major shifts within cell manufacturing globally, and is likely to have strong implications in terms of best-in-class cost structures and technology roadmap implementation.

Vertically-integrated ingot-to-module and cell/module manufacturers have been adjusting in-house cell capacity levels and technologies over the past 12 months, with almost all of the companies above maintaining this realignment phase to the market during 2020. It is now being seen as critical for GW-based global PV module suppliers to have in-house cell production knowledge at the multi-GW level, and most of this assigned today for p-mono PERC operation. This session will hear from many of the leading cell/module producers/suppliers listed above, focusing on company-specific technology roadmaps and the importance to each of having strong in-house cell output capability. CTO from leading cell makers, such as JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q CELLS, Trina Solar and LONGi Solar will be speaking during this session.

Heterojunction is still widely regarded by many companies within the sector today as the natural successor to p-mono PERC, with strong investments seen across Asia and within China, not to mention the early movements from previous a-Si proponents Hevel and ENEL. New capacity continues to be ramped, with REC’s recent activities within the company’s Singapore facilities being seen as a differentiated-technology play. A number of Chinese p-type cell makers have also announced multi-GW expansion plans for heterojunction, including Tongwei and Risen Energy. PV CellTech 2020 will examine the status of these companies’ initial HJT growth phases, and which companies are close to matching Panasonic/Sanyo performance with 2020 cell cost demands for profitability, such as Gold Stone (GS Solar). o Session will close with invited panel discussion with Q&A, to fully understand HJT status today

A new grouping of global GW-scale cell/module producers has emerged in the past few years, including a number of well-known suppliers (such as Risen Energy, GCL-SI, Astronergy, Talesun and Jetion) that are investing now in having advanced in-house cell production with multi-GW capability. This session will feature additional talks from CTOs of these and other key cell makers for 2020, including Jinergy and United Renewable Energy.