Golden Solar New Energy Technology Holdings Ltd. (Golden Solar) announced on September 17 that its first batch of 182mm mono-Si wafers was shipped to its client Taoistic Solar from its manufacturing base in Xuzhou, a city in China’s Jiangsu Province. The announcement followed an earlier notice released by the company on September 7 stating that it secured an order for 1 million pieces of 158.75mm mono-Si wafers from the same client. Hence, the latest shipments represent upside demand.

“Golden Solar” is the new name for the company that has been known as Baofeng Modern International Holdings Co. Ltd. for the last 10 years or so. This company was actually a footwear manufacturer for much of its existence. However, with the name change, it now appears to devote nearly all of its resources and efforts in crossing over to the PV industry. According to its own website, Golden Solar manufactures mono-Si wafers using a casting process. These wafers are especially suitable for the manufacturing of HJT cells. The company also holds proprietary technologies related to furnace modification and impurity removal.

With the most recent announcement, Golden Solar has again demonstrated its ability to mass produce 182mm mono-Si wafers and will be rapidly scaling up its production capacity for wafers of larger sizes in the future. The company plans to continue offering P-type and N-type mono-Si wafers with better cost-to-performance ratios to existing and potential clients.

The development of PV products is trending toward larger wafers such as 182mm (M10) and 210mm (M12). While increasing the wafer size can lead to a higher power rating and a degree of cost reduction, setting up the process lines for 182mm and 210mm products can be challenging for manufacturers. Besides the issue of replacing existing processing equipment systems with ones that can handle the larger wafers, raising the process yield rate when it comes to wafer and cell production is also an issue. Nevertheless, the major manufacturers are now proactively promoting products featuring 182mm and 210mm wafers. For instance, JA Solar, Jinko Solar, and LONGi jointly released a form factor standard scheme for modules with 182mm wafers this September.