Longi plans world’s largest solar factory in China’s Shaanxi province with investment of US$6.7 billion
- The expansion project will give it a capability to produce 100 gigawatts of solar wafers and 50GW of solar cells per year, it says in filing to Shanghai exchange
- The new plants, located near the company’s headquarters in Xian, are expected to go into operation in the third quarter of 2024
Top clean energy equipment manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology is planning to invest 45.2 billion yuan (US$6.7 billion) to build the world’s largest solar manufacturing base.
The company signed a letter of intent with local governments in China’s Shaanxi province for an expansion project that would allow it to build manufacturing capabilities to produce 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar wafers and 50GW of solar cells per year, according to a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The new plants will effectively double Longi’s existing capacity, and the company said in a press release the hub would be the largest solar manufacturing base in the world.
The projects, located near the company’s headquarters in Xian, are expected to go into operation in the third quarter of 2024, the filing said.
Wafers are thin squares of polysilicon that are wired into cells and then pieced together into the solar panels that generate electricity from rooftops and giant fields. Longi is the largest wafer maker in the world, with about 105GW of capacity as of last year, according to BloombergNEF. It also had about 35GW of cell-manufacturing capacity.