With unbelievable velocity, Corning introduced in its Q3 earnings name that it has introduced its Michigan silicon ingot and wafer manufacturing unit on-line. The plans for the photo voltaic manufacturing unit have been first publicly revealed in October 2024. The power is on Corning’s Hemlock semiconductor campus, and Hemlock polysilicon will feed to Corning’s new wafer manufacturing unit.
Photograph of photo voltaic ingot from Corning earnings report.
“Over the past 18 months, we’ve constructed the most important photo voltaic ingot and wafer facility in the US, co-located with our polysilicon manufacturing facility in Hemlock, Michigan. It was a big endeavor,” stated Wendell Weeks, Corning chairman, president and CEO. “To provide you a way of scale, the manufacturing unit comprises as a lot metal because the Salesforce Tower, San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper. The location is the equal of 60 soccer fields, and the constructing itself occupies about one-third of that.”
Corning has spent the final yr getting extra concerned within the home photo voltaic business. The corporate activated idle photo voltaic polysilicon belongings on the Hemlock plant and now has greater than 80% of its polysilicon and wafer capability dedicated for the following 5 years. Corning will supply wafers to Suniva in Georgia to make cells for Heliene photo voltaic panels assembled in Minnesota. Corning additionally has a wafer supply agreement with T1, which has a photo voltaic cell facility beneath development in Texas. Moreover, Corning bought the JA Photo voltaic module meeting facility in Phoenix, Arizona.
Though now taking part in practically each step of the silicon photo voltaic panel provide chain, Weeks didn’t indicate Corning would additionally get into the photo voltaic cell sport.
“Our space of focus has been on ingots and wafers. After which sure, we additionally wished to have a go-to-market place in modules, primarily as a result of we’ve some new improvements to deliver that might enhance the conversion effectivity and supply a few of the finest merchandise or possibly the most effective product on the planet for photo voltaic,” he stated on the earnings name. “We wish to see the U.S. provide chain that is ready to make merchandise which can be aggressive vs. the landed foundation of photo voltaic merchandise made abroad. Our focus goes to be on these areas that we might be actually robust. We’d somewhat supply the cell portion from different U.S. makers by time. However a technique or one other, we wish to deliver our innovation to bear in order that the U.S. has domestically manufactured solar energy.”
The wafer manufacturing unit in Michigan is presently producing hundreds of photo voltaic wafers every day, and Corning expects to quickly attain greater than 1 million produced every day. There’s been no confirmed gigawatt dimension equal of the wafer manufacturing unit’s manufacturing capability. Corning intends to construct its photo voltaic enterprise right into a $2.5 billion income stream by 2028.
This makes Corning the primary wafer manufacturing unit to come back on-line in the US in over a decade. The last solar wafer producer in the US was SolarWorld, which at one time made each step of the silicon photo voltaic panel in Oregon. The corporate went out of enterprise within the late 2010s.
Qcells has been engaged on its all-inclusive solar panel campus in Georgia, however no official phrase has been launched on the operation of its wafer manufacturing. Plans for NorSun’s wafer factory in Oklahoma have stalled.
