Longi Solar’s gigawatt-scale goals place reliability, durability front and center

Chinese monocrystalline PV giant Longi entered the Australian marketplace a little over two years ago, and it hasn’t wasted a moment in aggressively pursuing both rooftop and large scale market share. Richard Qian, a Longi Australia product engineer, says its high efficiency modules present a compelling offering, underpinned by the company’s commitment to durability and reliability.

Longi has made the transition from ingot manufacturer, to cell and module maker.

Image: Longi

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Richard Qian is a relatively new member of the Longi Australia team, which should come as no surprise as the company just set up the Australian office earlier this year to support local customers. And simply being new to the market is doing nothing to dampen the company’s ambitions.

“For 2020 our target is quite aggressive,” says Qian. “For utility as well rooftop we are trying to hit 1 GW for the Australian market [in 2020],”

Richard Qian, Longi Solar Australia

Photo: Longi Solar

Qian says that Longi Solar’s value propostion in the Australian solar market is informed both by its high efficiency offerings for rooftop and ground mounted arrays, but also the company’s strong bankability. “Longi is a very strong brand. We have a very healthy financial status and were ranked number one in recently released Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) Solar Module and Inverter Bankability 2019 report. And that is how we can show our value to our customers.”

In terms of modules, Longi is offering both its Hi-MO 4 and Hi-MO X series to Australian customers.

“We believe it [Hi-MO X] is going to be the hottest product for rooftop applications,” says Qian. “The Hi-MO 4 is 435 W mono product or bifacial panel. Both of these two panels are two of the most powerful panels on the market [in their class].”

Longi is best known in the PV industry as a monocrystalline PV manufacturer, and it has been associated closely with the rise of mono more generally in the market. High efficiency PV cells have been known to exhibit “light and elevated temperature induced degradation“ (LeTID), but Qian, a UNSW graduate, is confident that Longi Solar has addressed these concerns.

“LeTID was quite a hot topic when PERC mono cells became the dominant technology in the market,” says Qian. “The R&D department at Longi, in collaboration with UNSW, has developed and deployed new processes on the wafer and cell level. These can avoid LeTID in real world situations. This problem has been tackled. And we have a few third party testing labs which prove that the modules are free of LeTID.”

Richard Qian will be a panelist at pv magazine’s Quality Roundtable event at All Energy on October 23. Register free here.

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