The European solar PV industry is going through a tough time. While demand is still growing, though much slower than last year, European manufacturers are mostly unable to compete with the record low prices in the face of global overcapacities and regulatory support taking time to come bare. So unlike in the US or India, the solar manufacturing landscape in Europe has seen hardly any announcements for new capacities in recent months. Rather the opposite, many companies said they would expand in the US (like wafer maker Norsun from Norway), closed shop to move the US (like Meyer Burger’s module operation), or stopped manufacturing at all (like Solarwatt for its module and battery assembly).
Under these circumstances, the recent announcement of a GW-scale heterojunction (HJT) solar PV factory in Italy should be heartening for the industry. Even though HJT has a price premium over the more popular cell technology TOPCon, Milan-based Bee Solar has teamed up with Chinese HJT solar leader Huasun Energy to establish the vertically integrated factory in Italy, with construction start scheduled for Q1 2025 (see Chinese Partnership For GW-Scale Heterojunction Production In Italy).
TaiyangNews caught up with the Chairman of Bee Solar Paolo Maria Rocco Viscontini to learn more about the planned factory. Viscontini is also the president of the Italian solar association Italia Solare.
TaiyangNews: What is the annual production capacity you are planning for the factory?
Viscontini: We have a plan, based on a step-by-step path. Each step will go forward once certain conditions will be respected, mainly in terms of European legislation and energy cost we get thanks to solar plants we want to install around the factory to feed directly the production. Obviously, we will have to monitor the market and our progressive results.
In general, we can anticipate that we are planning a first phase of about 1-2 GW followed by a second phase of 5-6 GW, with more wafers and cells than modules. Our work on the territory allows to plan further expansion in the next 3-5 years if market conditions will allow it.
TaiyangNews: Will these modules be for sale within Italy alone or do you plan to ship these to Europe and beyond?
Viscontini: The factory will be in Italy and the Italian market will surely be important for us, but we like to consider our project as a European project, linked to China through a very special and essential bridge.
Bee Solar is a very international initiative: we’ll aim at all the European markets, starting from Germany, France and Spain, but we’ll consider important all the European markets.
In addition, we will look carefully to the US market, thanks to the US regulation that will create growing opportunities to American but also European manufacturers. It’s important to specify we’ll consider carefully the cells market too, as there is and there will be a strong cells market from several modules manufacturers.
TaiyangNews: What segments do you plan to cater to with these HJT modules? Do agrivoltaics and floating solar also figure in your strategy?
Viscontini: We will work to develop modules suitable for the main applications, starting from the ones characterized by more added value.
TaiyangNews: Enel Green Power is already working on a 3 GW HJT factory in Italy’s Catania that’s due to come online within 2024. How do you foresee competition to your HJT modules since Bee factory is not likely to come online any time soon?
Viscontini: We have contacts, and I can also say friends in 3Sun. I think we both help each other promote HJT, contributing to spreading the technologies we selected. In general, I think that the market will be so wide when we start our production that there will be space for both.
TaiyangNews: The European support is not very attractive compared to the US or India. Much less money, much less effective, too many different legislation efforts, too slow, and in the end relying on EU member states. Why did you start nevertheless?
Viscontini: We are aware that the European Union is slower than other countries, but we think it will be effective. Furthermore, European longer time matches with the time necessary to make a factory, that is not a matter of a few months. If we had an operative factory beginning of next year, that could have been a problem. Considering that our production will not start before Q2 2026, we foresee a good time alignment between Member State regulations and our start of production timeline.
TaiyangNews: Your announcement comes shortly after many European companies either said they would move to the US for expansion or close their manufacturing shop in Europe. Why do you think you can manage where several other Europeans failed?
Viscontini: As I said, if we had an operative factory now or in the next few months, it would have been a problem. For an existing manufacturing company, monthly revenues are essential, and we know how Chinese modules prices so far are absolutely not sustainable for European manufacturers. We depend on regulations that will protect the European manufacturing, without destroying the European PV market like it has been between 2013 and 2018 for the wrong MIP (Minimum Imposed Price) regulation and we think Europe is going to the right direction, imposing a significant minimum EU made quota (40%) that means to keep alive, with the remaining 60%, a more competitive PV market, useful to guarantee a healthy downstream market.
Our target will be to gain progressively a competitive position in a few years, thanks to innovation, automation, and economies of scale. Besides that, it is surely a strategic partnership with a top player like Huasun that will allow us to rely upon manufacturing best practices to design the most automated factories from wafer to module, while leveraging their supply chain to deploy the most cost-effective manufacturing facility. Our target is to anticipate, overtime, the redeployment of the entire ecosystem in EU to restore the competitiveness of the PV industry across the entire value chain in the region.
TaiyangNews: What else do you need from the EU / Italian government to make your project a success in the long run?
Viscontini: We rely on a good application of the NZIA in all or in most of European countries. More precisely we expect different and growing support linked to the upstream value chain: modules with wafers and ingots made in EU shall receive a higher support. Even if we are not working in the polysilicon production, we also think that modules with cells made with EU-made polysilicon should be properly supported.
We expect a good support from the Italian government in getting all the necessary authorizations to start the factory construction in reasonable time. Also from the Italian government we expect to be allowed to make whatever needed to have a competitive electric energy price, that means to rely effectively on PV, both as our PV plants for a direct consumption, and a more renewable energy market, the only one that can guarantee cheap and stable electric energy prices.
TaiyangNews: And if you put on your head as the President of Italia Solare and look at the whole European PV manufacturing industry along the value chain. What support do you think is most urgent to get from the EU and national governments to reverse the trend and see the goals of the European Solar Industry Alliance – 30 GW along the value chain by 2030 – being reached?
Viscontini: We expect a clear regulatory framework, in contents and timing. We think the delta costs between EU made modules (considering a modern and good scale factory) and Chinese modules is still high in percentage but not so high in absolute value. This means that such delta is not affecting too much the PV energy price, as we are talking of a few decades of thousands of Euro per MW installed, as full system price. It also means that costs necessary to cover the difference with extra EU modules manufacturers are not so high. For this reason, we think that the path to bring European PV manufacturing industry is possible.