China’s Risen Plans $7 B Solar Factory Run on Clean Energy: Bloomberg

Chinese PV manufacturer Risen Energy Co. is planning to build a 45 billion yuan ($7 billion) integrated solar power factory in Inner Mongolia that will run on clean energy, Bloomberg recently reported.

The plant will produce materials across the supply chain from industrial silicon to finished solar modules, the company said in a Dec. 27 filing with the Shenzhen stock exchange. It will also host and draw power from solar, wind and renewable energy storage facilities.

The clean energy component should allow the project to avoid higher power prices for heavily polluting factories. It is also the latest solar manufacturing complex to be located outside Xinjiang as international scrutiny of the region grows.

The plant, to be built in two phases, will be able to produce 200,000 tons of industrial silicon, 150,000 tons of polysilicon, 10 gigawatts of solar cells and three gigawatts of modules a year, according to the filing.

Risen will spend 25.2 billion yuan on power facilities for the factory, including installing 3.5 gigawatts of solar and 1.6 gigawatts of wind, as well as an energy storage site. The filing didn’t say whether all of the plant’s activities would be powered by clean energy. Risen rose as much as 7.8% in Shenzhen on Tuesday.

In June this year, the company launched its NewT@N — “the industry’s first mass-produced solar module with up to 700W output” — at SNEC 2021.

“Unveiled on June 3, the NewT@N module heralds the arrival of the PV 7.0 era and promises more stable performance and higher power generation in a single 210mm-sized silicon wafer,” said Risen. According to the firm, NewT@N means New Tunneling oxide/amorphous-Si (@) N-type technology. Here @ stands for the combined passivation of oxide (o) and amorphous-Si (a).

“Through NewT@N technology, Risen Energy solved the high surface recombination rate issue of traditional PERC cell at metal area which improved Voc and cell efficiency,” Risen Energy further claimed.