EDF Renewables North America has ordered up to 7 GW of solar modules produced by Canadian Solar’s new manufacturing facility under development in Texas.
The supply agreement for N-type TOPCON solar modules will support EDF Renewables’ project pipeline in the U.S. between 2024 and 2030 while positioning the developer to take advantage of incentives for domestically-sourced components in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Canadian Solar announced plans to build a 5 GW module manufacturing plant in Mesquite, Texas in June. The company intends to begin production by the end of 2023.
The announcement marked Canadian Solar’s entrance into U.S. manufacturing. One of the largest module producers in the world, Canadian Solar operates plants in Southeast Asia, Canada, and Brazil, while the bulk of its product is shipped from China.
The “state-of-the-art” facility will have the capacity to produce 20,000 modules per day, the company said in a press release. Canadian Solar plans to invest more than $250 million to build out the plant, which will create approximately 1,500 new jobs once fully ramped up.
The vast majority of modules manufactured and imported into the U.S. contain PERC cells. Monocrystalline PERC solar modules make up around 95% of global manufacturing. But a transition is underway toward higher-efficiency cell types TOPCon and heterojunction.
Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells are gaining commercial interest due to their potential for higher efficiency. An n-type cell is doped with phosphorus, which has one more electron than silicon (thus making the cell negatively charged). The first solar cell invented by Bell Labs in 1954 was n-type. Even so, the p-type (positive) structure became more dominant.
