China National Building Materials (CNBM), the No.1 company in the global building materials industry, recently announced that it is planning to invest RMB 3 billion ($46 million) to build a factory to manufacture heterojunction technology (HJT) solar cells in Jiangyin City, Jiangsu Province, China.

Jetion Solar (China) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary company of CNBM which specializes in the production of crystalline silicon module in Jiangyin city, revealed that the construction of the factory is expected to begin in earnest by the end of this year.

According to Jetion Solar, the factory will be focused on HJT, which is on the rise now given the strong global demand for highly efficient solar modules. It will have an annual production capacity of 5 GW for HJT solar cell. Production is scheduled to start in 2023. 

With the development of PV technology as it has been in recent years, the efficiency of PERC solar cells is reaching its upper limit, space for future improvements limited by the confines of the technology. Driven by market demands for ever higher efficiencies and lower levelised costs of energy (LCOE), manufacturers have focused heavily on n-type PV products, with heterojunction solar cell technology receiving increasing attention.

“In fact, HJT technology itself is nothing new, with Sanyo and then Panasonic having developed and produced the high efficiency technology over decades. However, it has remained a high-performance and high-cost product, which limits its mass market penetration.”said Jetion Solar CTO Ewain Guo. “Given the Chinese PV industry’s historic ability to aggressively drive down costs, let’s just wait and see.”

About Jetion Solar

Jetion Solar (China) Co., Ltd. is a world-renowned solar PV manufacturer, which is affiliated to China National Building Materials Group Corporation (CNBM), one of the FORTUNE 500 companies. Jetion Solar provides solar products, solutions and global EPC services to utility, commercial and residential customers all around the world and was rated as “Tier 1” on BloombergNEF Module Maker Tiering System. Currently, Jetion Solar has an annual production capacity of 2 GW of cells, 2.5 GW of modules and has 1 GW PV project development and investment capability.