2023-05-04 06:44:09
Like the Chinese model, only the large-scale production of reliable, durable, very low-carbon and high-efficiency photovoltaic cells and modules will allow the French photovoltaic industry to become competitive. In 2025, the first fully integrated giga-factory will emerge from the ground. A first stone in the construction of a large-scale industrial solution for the European solar sector. We interviewed Pierre-Emmanuel Martin, president and co-founder of CARBON, the company leading this titanic project.
CARBON is a French industrial company with a European dimension supported by an unprecedented alliance of entrepreneurs, industrialists and experts in solar energy.
It has announced the establishment of its first giga-factory of photovoltaic products, the commissioning of which is scheduled for the second half of 2025 and will be followed by a one-year industrial ramp-up, at the end of which 5GW of cells will be produced each year.
By 2030, CARBON aims to produce and market 30 GW of wafers, 20 GW of cells and 15 GW of photovoltaic modules thanks to the construction, in Europe, of several gigas-factories of the same type.
Engineering techniques: Why is it essential to build giga-factories of photovoltaic products?
Pierre-Emmanuel Martin: This gigafactory will be the first of its kind in France, but also in Europe.
This is the French response to a crucial question for Europe: how can we reduce our dependence on China for the supply of photovoltaic panels and cells? Because they are essential building blocks of our energy system.
For Europe, the construction of integrated giga-factories is therefore intended to regain control of our energy independence. These are very large industrial objects, the aim of which is to produce in large volumes to supply France and the European market as a priority with competitive, high-performance and very low-carbon photovoltaic products.
This first giga-factory of 60 hectares, with an annual production capacity of 5 GW of cells and 3.5 GW of modules, will come out of the ground in 2025. It will be located in Fos-sur-Mer, on the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille (GPMM) and will produce 12 million units per year[1].
What are you betting on to develop the European solar sector?
CARBON is the flagship that will strengthen the French and European ecosystem in terms of R&D[2]. We will initiate a profound reindustrialization by consolidating and developing the sector, both upstream and downstream.
Upstream, we will act on the industrial equipment component for the production of photovoltaic components and on raw materials (silicon, glass, aluminum, etc.).
Downstream, it will be a question of consolidating an existing and resilient ecosystem, on the assembly of modules, because the few industrialists who have resisted Chinese competition with regard to the assembly of modules[3] are sorely lacking in cells produced in Europe. Part of the cells produced by our factory will thus be used to build our own modules, while another part will be sold to assemblers.
Finally, the R&D teams will also work on new applications, in particular building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) and vehicle-integrated photovoltaic (VIPV) products.
What will be the role of innovation and R&D?
This plant will be of a new kind. On the one hand it will be a 4.0 factory fully electrified, intelligent, robotized and with 0 CO emissions2.
On the other hand, we especially didn’t want to build a big box placed on a lambda ground. The factory will be integrated harmoniously on the site and the buildings will be organized in several blocks of different sizes, articulated between them with green spaces, circulations, breaths, etc.
This 60-hectare site will thus be organized like a small town, an industrial campus which will also host R&D teams, since it is expected that 3% of annual turnover will be reinvested in R&D and not just in technological breakthroughs. .
We will also rely on incremental innovation, because this allows us to progress little by little, at all stages of the value chain. We will work on improving the cell (architecture, metallization, chemical treatment, silicon quality, etc.), but also on the modules (glass quality, frame, encapsulants, etc.), always keeping the price aspect in mind. and competitiveness.
The technologies we will use will therefore be both innovative and bankable.
How to make the European PV sector competitive?
To be competitive, the French and European sector must scale up, in other words increase in volume.
It’s the same problem as in electronics: by multiplying the production capacity by ten, you reduce the cost of production by two. This is the principle applied by the Chinese. In 15 years, they have succeeded in reaching very large volumes and drastically lowering the cost of the panel, so that photovoltaic energy has become the most competitive energy on the market.
It is this type of industrial model, scaling up by integrating the entire value chainwhich we must now apply, in order to reduce intermediation margins, influence the market with regard to the purchase of raw materials and increase the capacity for negotiation.
In addition, producing the panels in Europe makes it possible to remove a large part of the financial cost of transport, which offsets all or part of the additional cost of labor vis-à-vis China, which is not as important. as some like to say.
You were talking regarding 0 carbon emissions. Are there other objectives in terms of environmental performance?
The environmental benefits of this gigafactory will be multiple.
On the one hand, the panels, cells and modules that will be produced will benefit from a low-carbon energy mix, which is not the case for Chinese panels. Then, the factory will use the panels it manufactures to produce part of its energy.
On the other hand, the processes will be optimized from the energy point of view and studied to have a maximum of circularity. Cooling water will be in a closed circuit, industrial water will be treated and 80% recycled, silicon offcuts will be recycled and we will be attentive to all of our resource consumption.
Will you also work on the recyclability of end-of-life panels?
The question of recyclability has been integrated into the design of the products, from the start of the project, and the panels will be as recyclable as possible. In France, thanks to SOREN, panels can already be 95% recycled.
We will also work on the delicate and (at this stage) costly recovery of silicon from end-of-life cells, which requires the implementation of advanced techniques. While it is relatively simple to delaminate a panel at the end of its life, recovering the silicon from the cells for reuse involves meticulous and complex operations.
Initiatives are underway in Europe and in particular in France on this aspect. We hope to be able to do this within a few years, because circularity is an important issue.
[1] 5GW of modules = approximately 12 million panels, i.e. 25 km²
[2] through partnerships with CEA, INES, ISC Konstanz, IPVF, Becquerel Institute, etc.
[3] In France, for example, Systovi and Voltec.
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