Norway based solar module manufacturer REC Group has placed an order with China's Suzhou Maxwell Technologies to supply equipment worth 600 MW to be installed for the company's Singapore fab to produce its latest offering REC Alpha Pure-R modules.
An REC Group spokesperson shared with TaiyangNews that the 'equipment represents 600 MW module capacity for the moment and is for our Singapore facility'. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A part of India's Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), REC unveiled the REC Alpha Pure-R series at Intersolar Europe 2022 where it won an award for these lead-free modules based on G12 heterojunction (HJT) cells and power output of up to 430W (see Day 1 Highlights From Intersolar Europe 2022).
Maxwell production equipment, deployed at REC's Singapore fab, has been producing these panels since September 2022 with 1.2 GW capacity, for which it claims to be booking orders from 'plenty customers' across the US, Europe and Asia. The fab had an annual production capacity of 600 MW and added 400 MW more with Maxwell equipment (see China PV News Snippets).
"REC's choice allows us to see a brighter prospect of global HJT market. In the future, we will continue to strengthen our R&D capability to provide the more advanced and improved HJT manufacturing turn-key solution to customers," said Maxwell Chairman Jian Zhou.
"For REC, this supply agreement means we have a reliable partner with a cost-effective and aggressive R&D roadmap, well matching our future product portfolio," said REC's CTO Shankar G Sridhara. "With a strong manufacturing capacity, Maxwell is also able to meet REC's aggressive ambition to become a multi-GW HJT player in the solar industry in the coming years."
In April 2022, REC's parent RIL also contracted Maxwell for 4.8 GW HJT cell production equipment of 8×600 MW as the company targets to launch its cell and module giga fab production with 10 GW initial capacity in India, by 2024 (see Reliance Bets On Heterojunction Production).
TaiyangNews evaluated the HJT technology and its prospects in our August 2022 report on the same. It is available for free download on our website.