‘Workhorse’ PERC innovation to drive Suniva’s scaling up of United States solar battery production

“Suniva will continue to produce PERC cells,” Card informedPV Techtoday, when inquired about the cell innovation that the brand-new center will utilize. “What this statement confirms is that PERC stays a workhorse item, especially in the United States market.”

PERC has actually been an essential element of the business’s go back to cell production, which started with the relaunch of its production center in Georgia in 2024. Card informed PV Tech Premium recently that this duration was a “extremely vibrant regulative environment for using the TOPCon,” which enhanced business case for other kinds of cell innovation.

“PERC was attempted and real,” he continued, indicating the myriad of legal conflicts that have actually involved the world’s leading TOPCon makers in current months. “It was a lot more tidy course, without the possible danger of legal or regulative obstacles that you may need to conquer.

“What we did not wish to do was construct a center and after that right away get advised by somebody stating ‘you have a patent offense here, you have a patent offense there.'”

‘You can merely develop more physical systems of solar batteries on PERC’

Recently, Card stated that there were “3 pillars” behind the business’s choice to utilize PERC, of which one was the legal landscape in the United States. The 2nd refer to innovation, as Card argued that “TOPCon is a far more unstable compound to develop than PERC,” which once again enhances business case for the latter innovation.

The 3rd, and maybe most substantial, pillar is the financial truth of producing PERC cells versus other cells, and the state of the existing United States supply chain, which incentivises production at scale, rather that production of the most effective innovations.

“The truth is that, presuming PERC looks great and TOPCon looks great, TOPCon has numerous extra production actions that PERC does not have,” discussed Card. “It physically takes numerous hours to make a single TOPCon cell than a single PERC cell. When you theorize those additional hours into volume over a year, or over 3 years, it ends up being actually significant, the variety of physical cells you can develop on one platform than another.

“You can merely produce more physical systems of solar batteries on PERC than you can on TOPCon.”

This distinction in scale is even more considerable in the United States where, as Card put it, there is a “significantly inverted and large pyramid” of production capability for different parts of the United States solar supply chain; simply put, there is a lot more module implementation and module production capability in operation in the United States than there is cell production, so the most reliable cell production procedure would be one that can produce the biggest variety of cells to resolve this imbalance.

Figures from PV Tech Research show this misalignment in between cell and module production capability, as the United States presently has 77.3 GW of module production capability in operation, compared to simply 26.5 GW of cells; market experts from the business released a series of visitor blog sites on PV Tech recently about precisely this variation in United States production capability throughout the supply chain.

“There had actually been such a headstart in release and module production, and an absence in cell production, [and] what I believe we properly determined out of that was that the difficulty in the United States, in the intermediate term– suggesting one to 5 or 6 years– was not power per system, however it was large variety of systems,” described Card.

Throughout our discussion recently, Card stated that if his business had 5GW of cell production capability “I ‘d be offered out”; possibly not unrelatedly, today’s statement of the funding for the South Carolina center included the news that Suniva has actually protected offtake contracts for the “bulk” of the output of the brand-new 4.5 GW center.

United States policy drives producing financial investment

The United States policy landscape has actually been an essential consider current modifications in the United States solar sector. The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) drove an 800% boost in United States solar production capability and even the more current One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) “didn’t eliminate the 45X advanced producing credit,” as Crux’s Hasan Nazar informed PV Tech Premium last month.

While Card is less positive about the effects of the policy landscape on implementation, he concurs that chances stay for makers in the existing environment.

“We required a policy structure that supported growing United States production. There is much with OBBBA that supports United States making development in solar,” he stated. “You’ve seen a fantastic uptick in statements of factories considering that OBBBA– I’m not going to get into a dispute if it’s excellent overall for solar implementation, everybody has views on what that is– however I can inform you that it is great, and Section 232 is great, for United States producing development.”

Card included that policy has actually ended up being a significant talking point, and a chauffeur of choices, for business that are aiming to buy United States production at present.

“I heard over the summertime at PV ModuleTech that there were a great deal of end-use purchasers stating their focus had moved from an innovation assessment to a regulative examination, which has ended up being the chauffeur: am I certified to take part in this market?” he stated.

“It does not matter what your item does– excellent, bad or otherwise– if you’re not certified to take part in the marketplace.”

Card declares United States polysilicon production is ‘robust’

The variation in between module and polysilicon production in the United States is even higher than the variation in between module and cell production, and is maybe the best difficulty to be conquered if the United States is to construct a robust domestic supply chain. Figures from PV Tech Research reveal that there is simply 15.5 GW of PV-allocated polysilicon production in the United States, and simply 5GW of United States domestic wafer production capability.

Suniva has actually currently signed a handle domestic polysilicon service provider Corning to source its polysilicon and wafers from domestic manufacturers, and while Card did not discuss the source of polysilicon for the business’s South Carolina center, he stated today that Corning “continues to be a valued supply chain partner of Suniva’s”.

When asked about the United States polysilicon landscape more broadly, Card was bullish on the capacity for domestic production.

“It’s robust on poly,” he stated. “Certainly when you take a look at the United States poly gamers, there’s sufficient polysilicon developed in the United States to support the United States market; there’s really reasonably synchronised capability in between polysilicon and implementation. The issue is that transforming that polysilicon into wafers, and those wafers into cells and those cells getting released into modules.

“The truth is we do not have the capability to make wafers, we have really little capability to make cells and there needs to be more if you’re going to have a self-sufficient domestic supply chain.”

Maybe the greatest proof of the impact of policy can be seen in Suniva’s own history. The business was established in 2007 and rapidly broadened to cell and module production, however an increase of Chinese items into the United States market in the 2010s showed stiff competitors for domestic makers; Card informed PV Tech Premium that throughout this duration, in between 30 and 35 cell and module produces in the United States failed.

Suniva, too, applied for personal bankruptcy in 2017, and it was just after substantial policy shifts– such as the setting of tariffs on Chinese products from 2018 following a Section 201 problem from Suniva, and the passage of the IRA– that produced the financial conditions for Suniva to go back to making in 2024.

Policy obstacles in the worldwide supply chain

The policy circumstance is not best; Card himself confessed that there might “definitely” be enhancements made to the policy landscape in basic, and Section 232 in specific.

Even the United States’ policy history has actually seldom been to the advantage of all business in the sector. In 2018, when Suniva introduced the Section 201 petition, a variety of United States solar business and prominent trade body the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) challenged the petition, declaring that the tariffs would cause Chinese producers handing down expenses to their United States purchasers, which would eventually hamper implementation.

While Card was positive that the present policy landscape would continue to support producers, he stated that, as the United States has actually invested years ‘offshoring’ its production capability throughout a variety of markets, bringing that capability back to United States soil, and even simply to allied countries, would take some time. For Card, onshoring will be an “development,” not a “transformation”.

“You can’t blame this on blue administrations or red administrations, however we’ve invested, as a nation, 40 years offshoring our production,” he discussed. “It was not an offshoring transformation, it was an offshoring advancement. It’s affordable to anticipate that, directionally, onshoring can’t be a transformation either; it’s a development.”

He still states that “we ought to do it.” Card indicate efforts such as ‘friend-shoring’, a procedure explained by Nazar as the sourcing of products and parts from allied nations as a method to lower dependence on Chinese products without requiring to quickly construct a robust production sector in the United States, which would be especially challenging to attain for the upstream elements, such as polysilicon and wafers.

“I do not believe that anybody is arguing for a genuinely exclusionary protectionist environment,” stated Card. “They’re arguing for the United States to have the capability to look after its own energy requirements. Some portion of that is going to be home-grown, however it will constantly deal with the international phase and we will deal with buddies.”

Once again, Suniva’s past, which has actually varied from insolvency to market prominent cell production, is maybe explanatory in this regard.

“When Suniva restored it’s factory, we needed to do it through friendshoring because, as a nation, we invested numerous years offshoring things that there was no market in the United States,” described Card. “We were greatly dependent on European devices in our very first factory. It’s a best example.”

Card will speak at next month’s PV CellTech conferencekept in San Francisco from 13-14 October 2026. He will exist on a panel conversation about how supply chain collaborations can drive producing development, together with specialists from Roth, Heliene, Solarcycle and Hemlock Semiconductor. For the complete program and information on reservation, click here