Top clean energy equipment manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology Co. is planning to invest 45.2 billion yuan ($6.7 billion) to build the world’s largest solar manufacturing base.
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The company signed a letter of intent with local governments in China’s Shaanxi province for an expansion project that would allow it to build manufacturing capabilities to produce 100 gigawatts of solar wafers and 50 gigawatts of solar cells per year, according to a filingBloomberg Terminal to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The global industry of solar panel manufacturers is somewhat hard to compare as companies announce different measurements of their size and their production capacities. Some companies announce their annual module capacity while others announce their lifetime capacity. We have compiled a list that includes the largest companies in both categories.
LONGi Solar is one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the World. The Company is located in the Chinese town of Xi’an in the province of Shaanxi. LONGi Solar was established in the year 2000 and has revenues of 8.416 billion US dollars. The company produces 30GW of high-efficiency solar wafers and modules per year. These modules are monocrystalline and use either the PERC, the bifacial technology, or both. The current generation cells of the LONGi Solar have 30-year reliability and their P-type PERC cells have an efficiency of 24.06%.
Update 2024: LONGi inked a substantial 576MW sales agreement with Nofar Energy Romania for an undisclosed photovoltaic (PV) project in Romania. The project, anticipated to commence construction in 2024, will utilize LONGi’s Hi-MO 7 modules and is projected to become operational in 2025.
JinkoSolar is a listed solar panel manufacturer from Shanghai, China. The company owns nine production facilities globally and has an annual capacity of 31 GW for solar wafers, 19 GW for solar cells, and 36 GW for solar modules. JinkoSolar especially has a focus on Half-Cell technology, Bifacial technology, and Tiling Ribbon technology, which is a rivaling technique to 5BB and was developed by JinkoSolar.
Trina Solar is a China-based solar panel manufacturer. The company is located in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, in the city of Changzhou. Trina Solar was founded in 1997 and has so far delivered over 77 GW of solar modules globally. Since 2020 the company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The firm develops ultra-high power monocrystalline solar modules and some incorporate the bifacial technology.
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Canadian Solar is, as the name implies, a Canada-based solar module manufacturer. The company was founded in 2001 by Dr. Shawn Qu to “foster sustainable development and to create a better and cleaner earth for future generations”. In the last 20 years, the company has evolved into one of the global players in the solar industry with more than 63 GW of solar modules shipped to over 160 countries globally. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and has received multiple awards like the “No. 1 Top Bankable Manufacturer Rated by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) in 2020” Award by Bloomberg. The company produces inverters, energy storage systems, and solar modules with Bifacial, HJT, and PERC technologies.
Q-Cells is a solar module manufacturer that was founded in Germany in 1999. and after being bought out of bankruptcy by the Hanwha Group the firm relocated to Seoul, South Korea. The company is a leading solar company with R&D facilities in Germany, Korea, China, and Malaysia.
Risen Energy is a publicly-traded Chinese company, founded in 1986. Risen Energy is one of the oldest solar companies still active today. The company manufactures wafers, cells, and solar modules and is also an investor and a developer of EPC projects in the solar industry. The company has a yearly solar module capacity of 19.1 GW produces PERC, HJT, and Bifacial solar modules.
First Solar is an American solar module manufacturer based in Tempe, Arizona. Since 2016 the company is led by CEO Mark Widmar. First Solar produces utility-scale solar modules often used in solar plants. The modules have a warranty of 25 years and use advanced Thin Film solar technology which has a higher temperature coefficient and lower degradation rate than conventional silicon-based solar modules.
Suntech is a solar cell and module producer from Wuxi, China which was founded in 2001. So far the company has delivered solar modules to over 100 countries worldwide with a combined capacity of 30 GW. Suntech uses state-of-the-art PERC technology and Bifacial, Half-Cell, and Multi-Busbar technologies.
JA SOLAR is a Beijing-based solar module manufacturer that was founded in 2005 and is listed on the NASDAQ. The company has delivered solar modules to over 33.000 clients in over 100 countries worldwide and has a lifetime capacity of 73 GW of solar modules. JA SOLAR produces Bifacial PERC modules and HAlf-Cell in addition to conventional monocrystalline solar modules.
Worldwide Energy and Manufacturing USA Co., Ltd is a US-based photovoltaic module manufacturer that was founded in 1993. In addition to the production of solar modules the company is also a provider of PV technical services for solar plants. Worldwide Energy and Manufacturing USA Co., Ltd has a capacity of around 9 GW annually.
Solar energy is one of the most important renewable energies that humans are able to use on a large scale. The sun sends more energy to earth in one hour than humankind uses in a year, and in addition to that, we are able to harvest it easily and cheaply compared to fossil fuels. One way to capture sunlight is with solar or photovoltaic modules.
This list contains the largest photovoltaic module manufacturers in the world. The majority of the firms have their headquarters and manufacturing sites in China but do also have regional offices around the globe. Next to China, there are many companies from India, the US, and Germany and a few from the UK, France, Spain, Japan, and South Korea.
The manufacturers in our list are producing state-of-the-art PV modules and panels. In the following paragraphs, we are introducing you to the most important PV technologies that are currently “en vogue”.
Most photovoltaic cells are constructed using crystalline silicon wafers or thin-film technology, whereas around 90% of solar modules are using crystalline silicon. Photovoltaic cells can either be monocrystalline or polycrystalline. The usage of a monocrystalline structure allows for higher efficiency but is also more expensive. The majority of the wafer-based solar cells are polycrystalline which have lower efficiency but are more cost-effective.
The development of large-scale thin-film solar cells and modules is fairly new. In contrast to crystalline solar cells thin-film solar cells do not require a crystalline structure and basically “sandwich” their components between two panes of glass. This is an interesting technology since thin-film panels can be produced in different shapes and sizes. On small-scale thin-film solar cells are used in calculators or backpacks.
In the composition of this list, we tried to determine which kind of solar modules companies manufacture. However, this was not always apparent. Where possible we tried to highlight high-efficiency crystalline technologies like PERC, Bifacial, HJT, and others.
PERC or passivated emitter and rear contact is a new technology for crystalline solar cells that allows the cells to capture more sunlight than traditional solar cells. This is achieved by adding an extra layer to the PERC architecture near the rear surface through which more electrons can be capture by the solar cells. Additionally PERC cells are able to attenuate rear recombination which inhibits longer wavelength from turning into heat. This would damage the solar cells over time.
Bifacial solar panels have a second “face” of solar cells on the back which allows the cell to capture light reflected by the ground. Different types of ground surface are able to reflect different amounts of light back in the solar panels. Bifacial solar panels are only installed on solar parks and some solar parks are covering the ground near the solar panels with highly reflective materials in order to capture as much sunlight as possible.
BIPV stands for Building-integrated photovoltaics. This technology allows solar panels to be integrated into buildings.
Heterojunction solar modules are a hybrid between crystalline silicon wafers and thin-film solar cells. The technology is not new, but was patent protected by Panasonic. After the patent protection has ended many manufacturer are now using the technology for their own solar cells. Heterojunction solar cell is the most promising technology even surpassing the above mentioned PERC architecture.
The traditional Full-Cell technology has each solar cell in a solar panel connected to the next one in the panel. If one cell is not able to work because either it is broken or the cell is covered by a leaf or a shadow, the whole panel is not able to work. Half-Cell technology splits the solar panel in half which allows half the cell to function normally while the other half is covered up. Half-Cells are also hotspot safe and are able to mitigate more heat than Full-Cells.
Image Source: Unsplash (Markus Spiske, 26.01.22; Nuno Marques, 26.01.22)
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