Chinese panel maker Jetion Solar, a subsidiary of CNBM, has started building a 5GW plant in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China, to produce heterojunction panels.

Jetion Solar is working with German module manufacturer Avancis to develop the facility. The total investment of the first phase project is 1.8 billion yuan. It should be completed by April, with commercial operations scheduled to begin in August.

HJT technology is nothing new, and Sanyo and Panasonic have been developing and producing this high-efficiency technology for decades, Jetion Solar chief technology officer Ewain Guo said when the project was first announced in August 2021. However, it remains a high-performance and high-cost product, which limits its penetration in the mass market. Given the Chinese PV industry's historical ability to aggressively reduce costs, let's wait and see.

Jetion Solar currently has 2.5GW of photovoltaic module production capacity and 2GW of solar cell production capacity. In 2022, it began operating a new 1GW monocrystalline PERC cell plant in Tongcheng, Anhui Province, China.

CNBM also operates CIGS production facilities at four different locations, including one in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province. The group is the first company to introduce large-scale CIGS production in China.Editor/XingWentao