Final week, French PV startup Carbon introduced plans for its first European PV manufacturing facility, set to supply an preliminary capability of 5GW of cells and three.5GW of modules. The announcement comes as Europe makes an attempt to revive its PV manufacturing business and set up a response to the worldwide focus of PV manufacturing in China.
Set to return on-line in late 2025, the assertion final week revealed that the ability might be positioned beneath the jurisdiction of the Port of Marseille in Fos-sur-Mer, southern France.
Talking to PV Tech following the announcement, Carbon revealed additional particulars of its plans and mentioned that with the manufacturing facility it desires to “assist Europe, and sort out the massive market distortions that we skilled for a few years with China and that we expertise now with the IRA (Inflation Discount Act) within the USA and the PLI (Manufacturing-Linked Incentive scheme) in India.”
Built-in Ambitions
“To get to a degree enjoying discipline we have to have robust industrial ambition and plans. That’s why we labored on this 5GW first manufacturing facility with this bold calendar,” mentioned Carbon CEO Pierre-Emmanuel Martin.
The ambition isn’t solely by way of the calendar. The Fos-sur-Mer gigafactory might be built-in, the corporate mentioned, importing polysilicon to fabricate ingots, wafers, cells and modules in a wholly non-Chinese language provide chain.
One of the vital important European polysilicon producers, German chemical firm Wacker Chemie, posted file gross sales and earnings figures in 2022 as polysilicon demand grew. It at the moment ships most of its product to Asia, as reported in PV Tech Premium in October.
This degree of integration is a big ambition for a European facility; the most important bulletins popping out of Europe in the meanwhile are for module meeting factories, like Enel’s 3Sun facility in Italy or AE Photo voltaic’s 10GW plan for Romania. Plans for built-in manufacturing have come extra from the US and India the place the IRA and PLI incentivise funding forward of Europe.
With 3.5GW of module and 5GW of cell manufacturing deliberate, Carbon confirmed that it plans to promote its extra 1.5GW of cells to different European module producers and foster an intra-European provide chain past its personal facility.
Nevertheless, its ambition doesn’t cease there. Martin mentioned to PV Tech that the corporate has plans to increase its capability fourfold to “15GW of modules and 20GW of cells by 2030, with different gigafactories in France and in Europe.”
“We must always look very carefully to what the Chinese language did in 2006/7/8,” he mentioned. “With a long-term imaginative and prescient they established photo voltaic as one of many pillars of Chinese language business they usually turned the foremost participant in just a few years.”
The acquainted figures of photo voltaic provide safety and power safety lie behind the corporate’s insistence on a domestically built-in provide chain. “Let’s not move from one dependency to a different,” Martin mentioned, “from dependence on Russian gasoline to dependence on Chinese language PV panels.”
Value-competitive European PV
Carbon’s plans will deal with tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) and interdigitated again contact (IBC) cell and module manufacturing. The applied sciences had been chosen for being “revolutionary, excessive yield and bankable. We foresee that TOPCon – with iterations – would be the main know-how available on the market in just a few years.” To that impact, this week JinkoSolar mentioned that it expects 60% of its 2023 shipments to be fulfilled by n-type TOPCon modules.
A problem that has hung across the emergence of home PV provide in Europe – and the US to a lesser extent – has been value in contrast with imported tools. PV Tech lined the subject in February, the place traders highlighted the necessity for a scaled provide chain to make merchandise cheaper and the attraction of freedom from pressured labour issues {that a} home base would supply.
Carbon echoed these factors: “We strongly consider in the necessity to regain our industrial energy and deal with ESG necessities; low carbon footprints and no pressured labour.”
Additional, it mentioned that: “We might be value aggressive. We all know the fee worth [of Chinese modules] with no market distortion and we all know that we are able to attain that worth. In a module a lot of the value is the polysilicon and uncooked supplies, the price of labour is marginal.”
Martin additionally mentioned that Carbon has a dedication to commit 3% of its annual turnover to analysis and improvement (R&D) as a technique to, as soon as once more, implement long-term considering and ambition and make its merchandise extra “bankable”. It’s a plan to take part within the ongoing industrial shift in direction of TOPCon manufacturing and improvement.
“What we’ve discovered from the Chinese language is that we have to give ourselves the means to find different applied sciences and to enhance [existing technologies] by incremental innovation,” he mentioned. The corporate will put R&D cash into cell effectivity, but additionally into ingoting and wafering, industrial processes and different phases within the creation of modules.
Europe has a powerful “R&D ecosystem” – simply this week, for instance, a German-Dutch consortium introduced a newly researched tandem PV module aimed on the European market. “All this ecosystem lacks now’s robust European industrial backup,” Martin mentioned.
However, past the enticing prospect of revolutionary new applied sciences – perovskites and the like – placing cash into confirmed, improvable and bankable applied sciences might be what permits Europe to partially “match up with Chinese language manufacturing”, he mentioned.
France: A protracted-term industrial imaginative and prescient
Seeking to the current and to Carbon’s first manufacturing facility, which might want to succeed if any of its grand plans are to carry water, the port of Marseille location made sense.
The corporate mentioned that: “We had been very welcomed within the south of France, by the native availability of employees and abilities close to Marseille, and the truth that we’re backed by a photovoltaic tools provider, ECM Inexperienced Tech, which is one among our principal shareholders.” It additionally cited the supply of land in France and the alignment of native, nationwide and European authorities on a long-term industrial imaginative and prescient.
The EU’s Inexperienced Deal Industrial Plan, launched early this 12 months, aimed to mobilise renewables manufacturing on the continent. Commerce physique SolarPower Europe – which is listed as an official supporter of Carbon – has given guarded reward to the scheme, issuing solutions for increasing its efficacy.
Martin was unphased by the truth that This fall 2022 noticed the closure and abandonment of two French PV factories by REC Group and Maxeon Photo voltaic.
Although at the moment the corporate is an unproven entity, Carbon’s plans can be an actual boon to manufacturing in France and throughout Europe if they arrive to fruition. In addition to its personal important ambitions, it appears occupied with wanting outwards and fostering a producing tradition with a solidly long-term rhetoric aimed toward partnerships and improvement throughout the PV provide chain.
“We shouldn’t be afraid or timid or naïve,” the corporate mentioned, “We now have all that we want in Europe, it’s only a query of will and ambition.”
