Enel Green Power and the European Commission have signed a grant agreement to help boost capacity at the former’s 3Sun PV panel factory in Sicily, Italy, to 3GW from 200MW currently.
The agreement, under the framework of the EU’s first Innovation Fund call for large-scale projects, will contribute to the development of Tango (iTaliAN pv Giga factOry).
The 3GW a year facility is expected to be fully commissioned by July 2024, after starting with the first 400MW in September 2023.
Enel Green Power said the total investment in the plant amounts to around €600m, whereby EGP’s commitment will be coupled with EU funding of nearly €118m.
The investment is expected to increase local direct and indirect employment by approximately 1000 jobs by 2024, alongside acting as a catalyst for the relaunch of a European PV value chain, Enel said.
Enel Group chief executive Francesco Starace said: “The global world demand of solar PV modules is growing at an accelerated pace.
“Europe alone is expected to absorb a large portion of additional demand thanks to the great competitiveness and convenience of this technology.
“The sourcing footprint of these important components is a weak point in the global supply chain and we see the need to rebalance its geographic spread that is today excessively dependent on a single Asian source.
“This investment will place 3000MW per year of production capacity back in Europe and will mark for Italy a big step in retaining leadership in technology.”
Enel Green Power chief executive Salvatore Bernabei said: “The Tango project will contribute towards the achievement of EU’s increased ambitions of 40% energy consumption from renewable sources by 2030, alongside helping reduce energy dependency.
“The gigafactory will promote a circular economy concept, creating a more sustainable and resilient European supply chain, from the design phase to the new models of reusing components at the end of their life cycle.
“Looking ahead, the Tango project has high potential for scalability and can become a model for other gigawatt-scale PV factories to be developed in Europe over the coming years.”
3Sun’s production will include bifacial heterojunction PV cells that capture more sunlight as the cells can respond to light on both front and rear surfaces, Enel said.
The PV panels will be further developed to also incorporate a structure called ‘Tandem, which utilises two stacked cells that allows for more light to be captured compared to single-cell structures, yielding higher overall efficiency, it added.
“The combination of bifacial PV panels and Tandem cell structure offers significant efficiency improvements, which will enable PV modules to exceed 30% efficiency, securing higher average energy production,” Enel said.