Australia’s only solar manufacturer launches $11m production and innovation facility

Australia’s only solar panel manufacturer, Tindo Solar, has officially launched its $11 million production and innovation facility in Adelaide, marking a new milestone for Australia’s domestic PV supply chain.

Tindo’s Australian Centre for Excellence in PV (ACEPV) includes an assembly line that can produce 150MW of Australia-made solar panels a year – an achievement that even impressed former federal energy minister Angus Taylor.

And while that part of the ACEPV was opened last year – in an event that drew a rare appearance from Taylor – the launch of the entire facility was officially marked this week in a ceremony attended by the current federal energy minister, Labor’s Chris Bowen.

The launch of ACEPV was heralded by Bowen alongside the news that the South Australia capital has been selected to host the 2024 International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC), one of the biggest events on the global clean energy calendar. See more on that here.

Tindo director Glenn Morelli says the company – and the ACEPV – is committed to help Australian manufacturing to play a part in the transition by building up the local supply chain.

“By 2050, 65 per cent of the electricity in the National Energy Market will be from rooftop solar,” Morelli said.

“We’ll be producing 70 gigawatts of power from solar panels – equivalent to the total current capacity of the NEM.

“For Tindo, this factory is just the beginning, and we want to be the catalyst for a domestic solar supply chain that means every part of the panel can be manufactured locally, creating thousands of jobs and giving every Aussie the opportunity to have locally-made panels producing power on their roofs.”

Tindo makes two solar panels, the 410W rooftop module and the 550W utility-scale module, the largest ever made in Australia.

The panels have the lowest cell-to-module (CTM) loss ratio of an Australia-made module; they produce power at around 21% module efficiency and 23.1% cell efficiency. The industry average energy efficiency of a solar module is between 17 and 19%, and the average CTM loss is 2-3%.

“At the ACEPV we have the engineers and the technical skills to commercially produce one of the highest-performing solar panels in the world,” Morelli said.

“If Australia is going to lead the world in the energy transition, we have to develop a sovereign capability in renewables.”

Currently, Tindo employs 50 people at the ACEPV, which includes a design and engineering function and an education facility for visiting students and innovators in the solar energy industry.