Australia’s Tindo enters big solar market with “world-beating” utility-scale panel

Australia’s first – and for some time, only – manufacturer of solar panels, Tindo Solar, has launched its first utility-scale panel, branching out from its focus on the rooftop market.

Tindo, which has specialised in making high quality residential and commercial rooftop panels said on Wednesday that it had built its first big solar panel – the 545W Karra module – and had already notched up some impressive test results.

Tindo said the Karra module had been evaluated by TUV SUD Korea – as a precondition of its product listing with the Clean Energy Council – and judged the most efficient in its class to be made in Australia, and one of the most efficient in the world.

“The engineers at TUV found the utility-scale panels produced 549W of power at around 21% module efficiency and 23.1% cell efficiency, and recorded just 0.07% CTM loss,” Tindo said in a statement.

This means that the panel produces almost 5W more than its rating, but also has the lowest cell-to-module (CTM) loss ratio of an Australia-made module, the company said.

“The engineering and technical team at Tindo Solar set out to build the world’s best solar module for the utility-scale market, and with 0.07 per cent CTM loss, and 23 per cent cell efficiency, they have designed a world-beating panel,” said Tindo CEO Shayne Jaenisch.

“Over the next decade there will be a steeper increase in demand for panels in large-scale projects than from our core market of rooftop retail and commercial,” Jaenisch added.

“Owners of solar projects want a high-quality Australia-made option, and we now have a market-leading product we can sell them, made right here in Adelaide.”

Tindo said the launch of the utility-scale panel was designed to coincide with powering up of the company’s new production line in South Australia that uses the latest global standard for solar cells, the M10.

On specifications, the Tindo Karra panel is considerably larger than the company’s largest residential rooftop module (410w Karra), and is designed to be used in utility-scale arrays, either in rooftop or ground-mounted applications.

The panel measures 2283mm x 1149mm in size and 29kg in weight and it includes a 25-year limited product warranty.

Jaenisch said that on top of strong interest in Australia-made panels, the utility-scale market was increasingly concerned about a company’s policy on waste going to landfill and any connections to forced labour in foreign supply chains.

“Many corporate owners of solar projects have internal policies about forced labour and they want some assurance about their supply chains,” he said.

“Our cells do not come from Uyghur Province and our suppliers were not named in the damning report on forced labour, In Broad Daylight. The modules are made at Mawson Lakes and we have an open-door policy – customers and regulators can come down and watch the panels being made.”

Tindo also has a program to repurpose second-hand Tindo panels for social and environmental initiatives, and recently formed a partnership with Adelaide company, Reclaim PV, which can recycle 98 per cent of a solar panel.

The 545W Karra panel will be available in commercial qualities from March 2022.