China's Jiangsu Zhongli Group subsidiary Suzhou Talesun Photovoltaic Technology Ltd, in short Talesun Solar, has revealed plans to establish a heterojunction (HJT) solar cell line, 5 GW of solar module line and a 5 GW photovoltaic+modern agriculture or agrivoltaic project in Fuping county of China.
The projects will be established through a joint venture (JV) company called Hebei Zhongli Tenghui New Energy Technology with a registered capital of RMB 400 million ($63 million), under a cooperation agreement with the local Fuping government of Hebei province.
Projects planned will be set up over the next 5 years. Under phase I, 3 GW module manufacturing and 1 GW agrivoltaic capacity will be realized, under phase 2 a HJT cell and 2 GW module manufacturing, and under phase 3, it will build a 3 GW HJT cell capacity along with 1 GW agrivoltaic capacity. Decision on remaining agrivoltaic capacity will be taken post requisite approvals are secured.
The agrivoltaic project is expected to cost an EPC investment of about RMB 21 billion ($3.3 billion) while the manufacturing facilities will cost RMB 5 billion ($784 million).
Talesun Solar said the investment is aligned with its long term development strategy and increase its market share. In the future, it will continue to make efforts to expand its market share of N-type cells and modules. At the end of 2020, Talesun Solar's module production capacity was 8 GW, according to its website.
Recently, Talesun announced cooperation with South African module produce ARTsolar to help it expand its production capacity to 325 MW (see Talesun Partners With South Africa's ARTsolar).
While HJT remains a more expensive Capex proposition than TOPCon that enjoys an advantage of being compatible with existing PERC equipment, the former is finding takers for being a technology that requires fewer production steps and the promise of higher efficiencies (see China PV Snippets: Talesun, YourBest, Taixing, NEA, Antaisolar).
TaiyangNews discussed HJT in depth during our December 2021 High Efficiency Solar Technologies conference. Recordings of all presentations during the event are available on our YouTube channel.