Asia Pacific drove LONGi’s shipments during H1 2024 as demand grew 140% YoY
Module sales of 31.34 GW comprised about 10 GW of back-contact shipments
It plans to launch HPBC 2.0 module products on a large scale during H2 2024
By the end of 2025, it expects BC production capacity to reach 70 GW, including about 50 GW of HPBC 2.0
The continued sharp decline in prices in the global solar PV industrial chain and inventory impairment provision impacted yet another of the world’s leading solar PV manufacturers, LONGi Green Energy Technology. The company saw its H1 2024 operating income slide by 40.41% year-on-year (YoY) to RMB 38.53 billion.
The manufacturer was in the red with a net loss of RMB 5.24 billion, a YoY decline of 157.13% from a net profit of RMB 9.17 billion in H1 2023.
“The imbalance between supply and demand since 2023 has pushed the industry into a deep adjustment, and due to low price competition enterprises are under pressure to make profits and cash flow in the short term. The rapid iteration of new technologies increases the risk of return on investment,” stated LONGi in its H1 2024 financial report.
LONGi added that its strategy to deal with the ‘drastic fluctuations during this deep adjustment period in the industry’ was to ‘actively adjust the rhythm of production and sales.’
The manufacturer sold 44.44 GW of silicon wafers during the reporting period, including 21.96 GW sold externally. This was a decline of 14.6% over the previous year’s 52.05 GW. For solar cells, its shipments totaled 2.66 GW, while it sold 31.34 GW of solar modules, representing a YoY increase of 17.64% over H1 2023 (see LONGi Shipped 26.64 GW Solar Modules In H1/2023).
Sales in the Asia Pacific region increased by over 140% YoY. Of the module shipments, back contact (BC) module shipments were about 10 GW.
On the technology front, LONGi was focused on improving its proprietary high-efficiency solar cell technology, Hybrid Passivated Back Contact (HPBC). During the reporting period, it launched the Hi-MO 9 bifacial solar module, based on the HPBC 2.0 cell technology with TaiRay wafers, which incorporates advanced composite passivation technology and high-reliability back contact interconnection technology (see LONGi Announces New Lab-Scale Cell Efficiency Record).
LONGi said this module now has a mass production efficiency of 24.43% and a bifaciality exceeding 70%.
For the distributed solar segment, LONGi introduced the 2,382 mm x 1,134 mm design with its Hi-MO X6 Max series whose mass production efficiency has gone up to 23.3%.
LONGi said that by the end of this year, it plans to send the HPBC 2.0 products to the market on a large scale.
As for the silicon heterojunction back-contact (HBC) technology, the manufacturer said its certified conversion efficiency exceeded 27.30%, while the R&D conversion efficiency of the 72-panel single-sided BC module reached 25.64%, setting new ‘records’.
In terms of next-generation technologies, LONGi is also working on crystalline-silicon perovskite tandem cells whose conversion efficiency exceeded 34.6% (see CPVS Releases China’s Highest Research-Level Solar Cell Efficiencies).
In terms of its manufacturing plans, by the end of 2025 LONGi expects its BC production capacity to reach 70 GW, including about 50 GW of HPBC 2.0. Further, by 2026-end, it will migrate all of its domestic cell production bases to BC technology.
LONGi also referred to its global capabilities saying its 5 GW US solar module factory officially started production in H1 2024, bringing it a strong market base for business development in North America.