Meyer Burger announced its plans to switch all its high-performance solar modules to a glass-glass design to increase production speed and prevent slowdowns due to product shortages.
The Board of Directors approved the update to introduce a unified product platform for Meyer Burger solar panels. The panels will continue to come in black and white versions, have bifaciality and low weight. Meyer Burger says it is laying the foundation to achieve premium prices for its high-performance modules in the long term.
The new product platform enables the scalability of new manufacturing capacities and accelerates mass production; for example, it eliminates downtime due to product changes and complex procurement logistics processes caused by product diversity. This enables Meyer Burger to tap further potential for reducing manufacturing costs. In addition, a uniform platform allows the company to focus research and development.
The lines for the future Goodyear, Arizona, site are designed for the new product platform from the outset. Technical upgrades at the Freiberg, Germany, plant are scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2023. While the progress of the expansion of German production capacity to 1.4 GW is happening, ongoing disruptions in global supply chains for some industrial electronics components have caused the ramp-up of the third module line in Freiberg to be postponed until the summer. The combination of supply chain issues and the preparation of production lines for the new platform results in a lower production volume than previously announced. Meyer Burger now aims to produce solar modules with a total output of approximately 800 MW in 2023.
Even before the introduction of the new platform, Meyer Burger will increasingly manufacture and make more widely available the current glass-glass product, which is already in high demand in the market today. Black and white glass-backsheet modules will continue to be available until the transition to the new platform is complete in order to serve customer needs also in the transition phase. The new platform can be combined with future solar cell technologies such as IBC-HJT and HJT-perovskite tandem, thus securing future development steps on Meyer Burger’s innovation roadmap.
