Meyer Burger Technology AG has officially started its solar cell fab in Thalheim, Germany with an annual installed capacity of 400 MW. Once the facility is completely ramped up in June 2021, the company said it will be able to roll out up to 200,000 solar cells a day.
The company has equipped the new factory with its own production equipment produced at its Neuchâtel and Thun sites in Switzerland, and built in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, in Germany's state of Saxony. Management has previously expressed its intentions to expand its annual solar cell capacity to 5 GW by 2026.
The current solar cell production site in Thalheim has a total area of 270,000 sq. mtr. which the management said is sufficient to expand by 1 GW to represent 1.4 GW annual capacity. It will also house some of the other important business divisions, including sales and marketing.
Meyer Burger will process the cells produced at its Thalheim location into solar modules at the Freiberg location where the module plant will be officially opened on May 26, 2021. First modules will be shipped from there from July 2021.
In April 2021, the company premiered its 1st module product series with up to 400W capacity aimed at residential and small scale C&I rooftop segment (see HJT Modules Made In Germany).
The launch of the cell fab also cements Meyer Burger's position as a solar PV manufacturer which it has turned into from a PV equipment manufacturer. Now the company manufactures its proprietary heterojunction (HJT)/SmartWire technology to produce its own cells and modules.
Meyer Burger chose former Q-Cells subsidiary Sovello's site for its solar cell production, and a former SolarWorld fab for module manufacturing (see Meyer Burger Selects German Locations For PV Production).