LERRI Solar Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xi'an LONGi, announced that its Taizhou facility officially entered mass production phases on September 6, 2016. The new facility increases LERRI’s mono-si cell and module’s capacity to 5GW and enables LERRI to top the mono-si module capacity worldwide.

LERRI has set up 500 MW module capacity in its Yichuan facility and Xi'an headquarter, respectively. In Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, LERRI’s cell and module facilities had 2GW of capacity that reached the mass production level in April 2016. Taizhou factory that arrived mass production phase on September 6 had 2GW of mono-si cell and module capacities. All these factory capacities totaled 5GW, a new milestone for LERRI.

With a positive expectation on PERC cell's future outlook, LERRI's Taizhou factory will focus on P-type mono-si PERC cell. LERRI has achieved 900MW PERC cell capacity in first half of 2016. If its Taizhou facility successfully reaches 100% utilization, LERRI's PERC capacity will approach nearly up to 3GW and become one of the leaders in PERC cell production.

Baoshen Zhong: R&D, aiming to produce 300W module in 2018

On the opening ceremony of Taizhou facility, Baoshen Zhong, Chairman of Xi'an LONGi, expressed that the company invested RMB 160 million in Taizhou facility to set up a cell R&D center, and another RMB60 million in setting up a module testing center. Majority of the crucial equipment was made by Chinese domestic companies, and merely a small portion was imported from Germany. The above two testing centers are predicted to be certified by International Accreditation Bodies by the end of this year and will be able to start on professional certificates for PV products.

Zhong stressed the importance of technical innovation. He pointed out, "This May, LERRI launched the latest Hi-MO product series. Hi-MO's core value is to resolve lumen initial depreciation (LID) issue of mono-si cells, with the prerequisite of high efficiency and high margins. "

During the solar energy trade show, SNEC 2016 held in Shanghai, an EnergyTrend representative participated the Hi-MO1 module debut show. With special technologies, conversion efficiency of Hi-MO modules is escalated by 5%. Meanwhile, initial LID rates can be eased by 50%. Therefore, Hi-MO modules’ long-term LID rates will be restrained to below 1%.

Under Baoshen Zhong’s leadership, LONGi and LERRI Solar have been maintaining proactively developing mono-si PV technologies to improve conversion efficiency and lower the costs. Zhong stated, LERRI aims to improve 60-cell module’s power output to 300W by the end of 2018, and schedules to expand module capacity to 8.5GW by the time and 10GW by the end of 2019.

 (Photo: LONGi’s Chairman Baoshen Zhong. Source: internet.)

(Written by Rhea Tsao, chief editor at EnergyTrend. Translated by Janet Chen, tranlsator at TrendForce Corp.)