“New era:” SunDrive wins funds to scale up Australia made solar cell production

Australian solar innovator SunDrive is a step closer to realising its vision of producing 5GW of modules a year, after securing an $11 million grant to scale up its solar cell production line to a commercial level.

Federal Labor announced on Wednesday that it was making an $11 million investment in the Sydney-based SunDrive through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency as part of its mission to drive production of ultra low-cost solar.

SunDrive, established by CEO Vince Allen during his PhD at UNSW and backed by high profile investors including Mike Cannon-Brookes, is developing a technology that uses copper for PV cell metallisation, instead of silver.

This novel approach aims to further cut the costs of making solar panels, given that copper is around one hundred times cheaper and one thousand times more abundant than silver.

The company says the metals swap will result in an installed cost of solar that is 20-30% cheaper than other high-efficiency cells.

Arena says the funding announced this week will go towards the expansion of SunDrive’s technology from prototype scale, or 1.5MW a year, to commercial capacity of more than 100MW a year.

The $33.6 million scale-up will mean SunDrive can make enough copper metallised PV cells for around 15,000 household solar systems each year. It will also see the company boost its staff numbers to around 100 people by the end of the year at their manufacturing facility in Sydney’s south.

In a post on LinkedIn on Monday, SunDrive hinted at the coming funding announcement by heralding a “new era of Australian solar manufacturing.”

“The last mass-produced solar cells were made in Australia over a decade ago,” the post said. “SunDrive’s about to change that.”

Arena chief Darren Miller welcomed the company’s “next step towards market entry,” with the agency having previously tipped $3 million into the demonstration of SunDrive’s technology at the prototype scale.

“To make ultra low-cost solar a reality, it is crucial that our scientists and researchers keep innovating and improving solar cells and module design,” Miller said.

“SunDrive’s technology that replaces silver with copper is a potential game changer and highlights why now is the time to invest in technologies for our future economic success.”

Federal climate and energy minister Chris Bowen said that the Albanese government’s investments in SunDrive were “about making more things here.”

“The Albanese government knows that local clean-energy manufacturing isn’t only good for local jobs, but for energy security too,” he said.

“Australian ingenuity helped create the modern solar panel, and with local technology breakthroughs into Ultra-low cost solar – we can drive even more affordable energy into our energy market, and energy markets around the world.”

On that front, it’s been a big week for Australia, with the announcement on Tuesday that Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is advancing plans to build a polysilicon manufacturing facility on Queensland soil.

Quinbrook proposes to use the land it has been allotted at the Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct in Townsville to house a “state-of-the-art” polysilicon manufacturing facility, itself powered by a large-scale solar and battery storage project it plans to build.

SunDrive, meanwhile, has its own big plans to fulfill, including to build factories that could produce up to 5GW of solar PV a year, targeting the premium rooftop market.

The plans, revealed in May by SunDrive’s strategic advisor Wyatt Roy – the former Coalition MP who was the youngest elected to parliament in 2010 when aged just 20 – start with a capacity production target 1GW, focusing on “cell metallisation” and modules.

A second factory, lifting total capacity to 2GW, would focus on rooftop modules and would introduce cell production, including texturing and junction cells.

A third factory, taking the total capacity to 5GW, would focus on utility-scale solar and would see the factory facilities scale up to become fully integrated, including polysilicon, ingot and wafer and glass production.

As well as Mike Cannon-Brookes, SunDrive has attracted investments from Blackbird Ventures, Virescent Ventures, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.