Enel North America to Build Solar Cell, Panel Manufacturing Facility in US

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Enel North America has announced through its affiliate 3Sun USA about its intention to build an industrial-scale production facility in the US for the manufacturing of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules.

The official statement by Enel held that the proposed facility is expected to have a minimum production capacity of 3 GW. It could be scaled up to 6 GW and is anticipated to create up to 1,500 new direct jobs by 2025. The facility is expected to be among the first in the United States to produce solar cells, the fundamental building block of PV modules.

Enrico Viale, Head of Enel North America, said, “With this announcement, it is our intention to bolster a robust domestic solar supply chain that accelerates and strengthens the US’s transition to clean energy. In doing so, we are creating thousands of new jobs, supporting local economies and providing stability to the solar industry.”

Currently, Enel is evaluating possible sites for the new factory and expects to begin construction in mid-2023. It’s anticipated that the first panels will be available to the market by the end of 2024.

Enel said that it will leverage its expertise and experience from its 3Sun Gigafactory in Catania, Italy, which is set to become Europe’s largest factory producing high-performance bifacial photovoltaic modules. Enel intends to replicate the Gigafactory factory in the US to produce bifacial heterojunction (B-HJT) PV cells that capture more sunlight as the cells can respond to light on both front and rear surfaces.

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Enel informs that 3Sun is already a market leader in producing high-efficiency cells, breaking a record in 2020 by achieving 24.63% efficiency. Through an ambitious R&D program, the PV panels will be further developed to also incorporate a tandem structure, which utilizes two stacked cells that allows for more light to be captured compared to single-cell structures, yielding higher overall cell efficiency. The combination of bifacial PV panels and tandem cell structure offers significant efficiency improvements, which will enable PV modules to exceed 30% efficiency, securing higher average energy production.

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Fewer than five large-scale solar module manufacturing facilities (over 1 GW) are currently operating in the US, while annual US solar PV installations are projected to grow from 16 GW in 2022 to 41 GW by the end of 2025, according to Wood Mackenzie.