Laplace Extends Solar Manufacturing Focus Beyond Equipment

Key takeaways:

• Laplace presented an integrated manufacturing model combining equipment, factory engineering, AI and digital services

• The company identified facility, supply chain, workforce and digitalization as key challenges for overseas PV manufacturing

• Its perovskite platform includes a 100 MW production line based on proprietary roll-coating and air-knife technologies

Leading solar cell production equipment manufacturer Laplace showcased its manufacturing solutions beyond individual tools at SNEC and Intersolar Europe 2026. This includes factory engineering, digital infrastructure, AI, and operational services.

Speaking at TaiyangNews’ Solar & Storage Procurement Briefing (SSPB.C) 2026, which was held during SNEC, Kamel Ounadjela, General Manager, International Business Unit at Laplace, highlighted the company’s fully integrated manufacturing layout. It includes Laplace’s equipment portfolio alongside third-party equipment manufacturers, including wet-processing providers, metallization equipment suppliers, characterization systems, AGVs, and other auxiliary tool suppliers.

Laplace identified major roadblocks in 4 different areas, such as facility, supply chain, digital, and manpower, across the global PV projects and structured its new business model. To address these challenges, Laplace outlined a service-oriented business model around 3 pillars: facility support, materials and consumables, labor, digitalization, and data management. The facility services include factory design optimization, infrastructure engineering, and localized solutions in accordance with regional regulatory requirements. The supply-chain services focus on ensuring critical spare parts are available within 2 hours and on local sourcing and procurement support. To address the labor and lack of digitalization, the company emphasizes factory automation, traceability, local storage of data, and AI-enabled production management.

Laplace has laid out an AI solution that integrates equipment operation, process control, and factory management with local server-based data management. According to the company, its AI solution can reduce manpower in process and equipment engineering by 50%, improve process capability index (Cpk) by 70%, equipment uptime by 5 percentage points, and accelerate ramp-up speed by 20%.

Beyond crystalline silicon, Laplace also offered a solution for perovskite manufacturing, with a 100 MW production line based on its proprietary roll-coating and air knife technology, which reduces perovskite crystallization time and energy consumption. Laplace stated that its equipment has supported customers in achieving 24.01% efficiency for wide-bandgap perovskite cells and 33% for both TOPCon-perovskite tandem and M6 large-area tandem cells. Its turnkey perovskite solution is customizable for pilot production of single-junction perovskite and Si-perovskite tandem manufacturing.