WORLD-GEN June/July 2018

WORLD-GENERATION JUNE/JULY 2018 6 Longi Solar was founded by Li Zhenguo in 2000 and is headquartered in Xi’an, China. Zhenguo also serves as Longi’s president. He addressed the media at a press conference on April 9 during the Bloomberg New Energy Finance 2018 Summit and highlighted his company’s position in manufacturing mono-crystalline solar cells and modules. There are eight operating factories, one under construction in India and nine sales offices. The 2018 capacity planning mea- sured in gigawatts is: 8 in cells, 12 in mod- ules, and 28 in silicon wafers. The company enjoys a leading 48% market share in mono wafers and 16% in mono modules. Longi Solar has 275 patents on ingot, wafer, cell and module technology staffed with over 700 technicians. It invests up to 7 percent of total revenue in R&D and boasts a 100 percent growth rate for the past three years. Gross revenue in 2016 was $1.67 bil- lion; net profit was $224 million. Longi has been listed on the Shanghai exchange since 2012 under an IPO. In 2014, Longi acquired LERRI. Longi recently rolled out bifacial tech- nology. Li Zhenguo said, “Last year we shipped 20 megawatts of bifacial modules. This year we are likely to sell over a giga- watt of bifacial technology in regions where utility scale is popular, like the US and Mexico. In the next three to five years, we expect to see 90 percent of the industry using bifacial technology.” Longi’s bifacial mono-PERC solution offers an average energy yield issuance of 3.93 percent, low- ers LCOE by 10 percent and increases product lifespan by 20 percent. Li Zhenguo also touched on the compa- ny’s close technology partnerships with DuPont and others including 3M, HUAWEI and Applied Materials. The collaboration with DuPont led to the launch of the new HI-MO2 bifacial module. Longi uses DuPont Tedlar backsheets on PV modules. DuPont innovated a clear breathable Tedlar PVF film backsheet material for bifa- cial modules. Compared to a double glass module structure, the new backsheets allow for higher reliability, lower operating temperatures, up to 30 percent lighter weight and a lower module installation cost. Since the merger, DuPontDow integrated the Dow Corning brand of PV silicone prod- ucts into the portfolio of solar solutions. TUV Rheinland, a world leader in com- pliance testing and certification randomly selected module samples and simulated energy yield in five different cities globally. Mono Perc module of Longi Solar won first place in the mono group among all mod- ules. In Pucheng, Shaanxi, China, power generation by bifacial module plus fixed tilt was 12.4% higher than Multi Module; In Kubuchi, Inner Mongolia, power generation by bifacial module plus tracker plus sand was 17.3% higher than Multi Module; and in Taizhou, Jiangsu, China, power generation by Hi-MO2 plus fixed tilt was 11.5% higher than Hi-Mo1. ABOUT BLOOMBERG NEW ENERGY FINANCE Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) is an industry research firm focused on helping energy professionals generate opportunities. With a team of 200 experts spread across six continents, BNEF provides independent analysis and insight, enabling decision-makers to navigate change in an evolving energy economy. Leveraging the most sophisticated new energy data sets in the world, BNEF syn- thesizes proprietary data into astute narra- tives that frame the financial, economic and policy implications of emerging energy technologies. Bloomberg New Energy Finance is powered by Bloomberg’s global network of 19,000 employees in 176 locations, report- ing 5,000 news stories a day. PERSPECTIVE LONGI SOLAR PREDICTS BY DICK FLANAGAN COMPLEMENTARYTO ITER The project is expected to complement the research planned for a large interna- tional collaboration called ITER, currently under construction as the world’s largest fusion experiment at a site in southern France. If successful, ITER is expected to begin producing fusion energy around 2035. By using magnets made from the newly available superconducting material — a steel tape coated with a compound called yttrium-barium-copper oxide (YBCO) — SPARC is designed to produce a fusion power output about a fifth that of ITER, but in a device that is only about 1/65 the volume. The ultimate benefit of the YBCO tape is that it drastically reduc- es the cost, timeline, and organizational complexity required to build net fusion energy devices, enabling new players and new approaches to fusion energy at univer- sity and private company scale.  The way these high-field magnets slash the size of plants needed to achieve a given level of power has repercussions that reverberate through every aspect of the design. Components that would otherwise be so large that they would have to be manufactured on-site could instead be fac- tory-built and trucked in; ancillary sys- tems for cooling and other functions would all be scaled back proportionately; and the total cost and time for design and con- struction would be drastically reduced. Because the magnets are the key tech- nology for the new fusion reactor, and because their development carries the greatest uncertainties, work on the mag- nets will be the initial three-year phase of the project — building upon the strong foundation of federally funded research conducted at MIT and elsewhere. Once the magnet technology is proven, the next step of designing the SPARC tokamak is based on a relatively straightforward evo- lution from existing tokamak experiments. FASTTRACKTO FUSION POWER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 (continued page 10)