Trina Solar has teamed up with SunDrive Solar to establish a commercial-scale PV module manufacturing facility in the Australian state of New South Wales and accelerate the development of the Sydney-based company’s copper-based solar cell technology.
Andrew Percival, national sales manager for Trina in Australia, said the SunDrive-led joint venture will apply for funding from the first round of the federal government’s AUD 1 billion ($660 million) Solar Sunshot program to develop a local manufacturing hub.
Trina and SunDrive plan to build a PV module manufacturing facility in New South Wales that would employ about 300 people with industry speculation suggesting the plant would likely have an annual production capacity of 1.2 GW.
Percival said the joint venture has already identified potential sites in Sydney with the project timeline now dependent upon on how its submission goes with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the federal government.
“That will certainly have a lot to do with it,” he said. “The Albanese government has offered a large amount of money to attract manufacturing back to this country and I think what they are looking for is a level of expertise as well as local content. This is an opportunity for Trina to take it’s expertise from a manufacturing standpoint, combine that with the SunDrive technology, and deliver what is required.”
Percival said that if all goes well, the scaling of the manufacturing facility will begin at the end of 2026, followed by the start of production in 2027.
“There’s couple of facilities already earmarked that look ideal for this scenario,” he said. “They’re fit-for-purpose sites so that wouldn’t be the hardest part. The hardest part would be working out the amount of lines that we would need to produce the sort of quantity and what the module size would look like.”
The joint venture plans to leverage SunDrive’s copper metallization technology, which replaces the silver traditionally used in solar cell production with copper, and will use Trina’s global manufacturing expertise and n-type technology.
Edison Zhou, Trina’s head of operations in Australia and New Zealand, said the initial focus will be on panel manufacture but added the company, which has been operating in Australia since 2009, is aiming to bring the entire supply chain, from silicon processing to wafer, cell and module production, to the country.
“Bringing more of the supply chain to Australia is critical if manufacturing is going to start up and then survive here,” he said. “So firstly we will bring the panel manufacturing here and then maybe cells and wafers. It will be a step-by-step process.”
Applications for the first of the Solar SunShot funding rounds are now being accepted with a total of AUD 550 million available. Submissions for Round 1A, with an allocation of AUD 500 million to support innovation in solar manufacturing, are due on Dec. 10, 2024, with full applications due on April 30, 2025. Applications for Round 1B that provides AUD 50 million in funding for manufacturing studies are due on Nov. 2, 2025.
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