Australia’s only manufacturer of Solar Panel and several local polysilicon hopefuls have received a significant thrust from the Solar Sunshot initiative of the Albanese government.
The Solar Sunshot program of 1 billion US dollars provided by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) is intended to expand the Australia Solar PV Manufacturing Industry by supporting local production innovations, scales and variety.
Arena announced yesterday that the new solar Sunshot financing of $ 34.5 million for the support of the local panel manufacturer Tindo Solar Scale increases its production from 20 MW to 180 MW solar panels per year and extended its product range by renovating its still New Mawson Lakes Fact. While the renovation work includes the introduction of advanced automation, more than 50 direct jobs are also created.
In addition, Tindo will carry out a feasibility study to set up an Australian solar panel ‘Gigafactory’, which can produce 1 GW panels annually, and to develop a recruitment and training program for employees of the PV manufacturing industry.
“This financing is an important step forward when setting up a robust Australian solar PV supply chain and enables us to reduce the costs of our high-quality solar modules, which makes it more accessible nationwide for houses and companies,” said the company. “We are proud to be at the forefront of the Australian energy transition and to play our role in a cleaner, more sustainable future.”
Tindo has been a beehive in the past few months. Cooperation with the University of New South Wales to explore the TopCon solar cell technology, selected more than 52,000 panels for the Bowen Water Pipeline Project from Queensland and receive a five-year 8.4 million dollar deal to export 15 MW to Vietnam.
Tindo started the production of Panels in 2011 and opened his new factory in Adelaide in 2021.
Local polysilicium power support
Polysilicium is a crucial material for the production of solar cells. China is the vast majority of the worldwide solar polysilicium (and cell and panel) production.
While Polysilicon has been as cheap as chips for some time due to the recently weakened competition between Chinese manufacturer-a damping agent to a local polysilicone industry that is absorbing-a great risk of the future of the solar production of Australia is our continuous dependency in overseas supply chains.
As early as 2022, CSIRO published the Australian silicon action plan, which indicates how Australia could develop a fully integrated silicon and solar cells. From the mining of the quartz to the production of polysiliconic pergots and wafers to the production of cells and beyond.
Yesterday Arena also announced that there were three companies for Solar Sunshot Finance for the support of investigations to build a local supply chain. The recipients:
- 5 million US dollars on Soltzartz for the construction of a 100,000 tons per annum near Townsville in Queensland.
- 1.3 million US dollars in energy to investigate polysilicone production with low emissions (50,000 tons per year) in AGLS Hunter Energy Hub in New South Wales.
- 4.7 million US dollars for outstanding PV for a study in a 2 -GWinging and wafer system, also near Townsville.
There are Sydneys Sundrive in relation to the local production of solar cells. This replaces silver in PV cells with copper-a material that is more frequent, more efficient and inexpensive. The company already has a pilot panel production line and announced in October last year to lead an application for Solar Sunshot financing in a joint venture with China’s Trina Solar, but since then there has been no further news. In January of this year, Sundrive concluded an agreement with AGL to investigate the development of a production facility in Hunter Energy Hub.
The Federal Minister of Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, commented on the financing announcements of the arena:
“When it comes to the future of Australia, nothing will be our sun and our solar know -how. Therefore it is so critical to unlock our future as a superpower for renewable energies and to secure the job of the future.”
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