Chinese solar production equipment supplier Suzhou Shengcheng Photovoltaic Equipment Co, Ltd (SC-Solar) has announced receiving an order to supply 5.2 GW heterojunction (HJT) capacity to India's Reliance New Energy Solar Limited as the country's 'largest' solar module production line to date.
The Chinese solar cell and wafer automation company also claims it is the largest HJT solar module production line project in the industry. Anticipating growing demand for domestic solar module production in India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government encourages the move, SC-Solar has set up a technical service center in the country with a local service team.
For Reliance that's working to bring the HJT module production technology of its Norway based subsidiary REC Group it acquired in June 2021, this order follows its April 2022 contract with another Chinese supplier maxwell for 4.8 GW HJT cell production equipment (see Reliance bets On Heterojunction Production).
One of the winners of India's Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme tranche I, Reliance is planning 4 Giga Factories for clean energy manufacturing including 10 GW solar cell and module fab in Gujarat's Jamnagar by 2024, that's to be scaled up to 20 GW by 2026 with HJT module efficiency of 26% (see Reliance Announces Power Electronics Giga Fab).
Companies in India are sourcing their solar PV production equipment not only from China, but also from Europe as German solar cell equipment supplier centrotherm said its order book from India adds up to over 10 GW from various customers including for 4 GW PERC line from a single company (see Centrotherm's India Cell Order Book Exceeds 10 GW).
In Dec. 2022, SC-Solar announced it secured an order for 4 GW worth of cleaning and texturing equipment, pre-cleaning equipment and etching cleaning equipment for heterojunction (HJT) technology from Gold Stone Energy, which recently announced achieving 24.46% efficiency for HJT modules (see China PV News Snippets)