Enel North America affiliate 3Sun USA is scouring the U.S. for locations to build a 3 GW bifacial solar module and cell manufacturing facility with plans to scale up production at the facility to 6 GW per year.
Construction at the yet undisclosed location is to begin in the first half of 2023, with production anticipated by late 2024. The facility is expected to create up to 1,500 new full-time jobs and supports the domestic solar PV supply chain.
“Recent policy tailwinds from the Inflation Reduction Act have served as a catalyst for our solar manufacturing ambitions in the US, ushering in a new era of made-in-America energy,” said Enrico Viale, head of Enel North America.
The proposed facility will be Enel’s second global PV manufacturing facility. The company previously announced the expansion of its 3Sun gigafactory in Catania, Sicily, increasing production capacity from 200 MW to 3 GW.
For the U.S. facility Enel intends to produce the same type of modules as its Sicily plant is producing, the bifacial heterojunction (B-HJT) PV cells, which capture more sunlight as the cells can respond to light on both front and rear surfaces.
3Sun’s B-HJT PV cells have already produced at high-efficiency levels. In February 2020 Enel announced that the cells carried a 24.63% efficiency, setting a record established by the Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin, Germany.
Currently fewer than five large-scale solar gigafactories (over 1 GW) are operating in the U.S., while annual PV installations are projected to grow from 16 GW to 41 GW in 2025, according to Wood Mackenzie.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.