With unbelievable pace, Corning introduced in its Q3 earnings name that it has introduced its Michigan silicon ingot and wafer manufacturing facility on-line. The plans for the photo voltaic manufacturing facility 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 facility.
Picture of photo voltaic ingot from Corning earnings report.
“During the last 18 months, we’ve constructed the biggest photo voltaic ingot and wafer facility in the US, co-located with our polysilicon manufacturing facility in Hemlock, Michigan. It was a big enterprise,” stated Wendell Weeks, Corning chairman, president and CEO. “To present you a way of scale, the manufacturing facility comprises as a lot metal because the Salesforce Tower, San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper. The positioning is the equal of 60 soccer fields, and the constructing itself occupies about one-third of that.”
Corning has spent the final 12 months getting extra concerned within the home photo voltaic trade. 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 subsequent 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 below building 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 suggest Corning would additionally get into the photo voltaic cell recreation.
“Our space of focus has been on ingots and wafers. After which sure, we additionally needed to have a go-to-market place in modules, primarily as a result of we’ve some new improvements to carry that would improve the conversion effectivity and supply a few of the finest merchandise or possibly the most effective product on the earth 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 might 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 sturdy. We might fairly supply the cell portion from different U.S. makers by way of time. However a method or one other, we need to carry our innovation to bear in order that the U.S. has domestically manufactured solar energy.”
The wafer manufacturing facility in Michigan is presently producing 1000’s 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 facility’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 facility 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.
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