Trina Solar: Leading the Charge in PV Module Resilience Against Hail, Hurricanes, and Extreme Temperatures

The transcription of the video is below.

Billy Christie’s Background and Responsibilities at Trina Solar

Kerim: All right. Hi, everyone. This is Kerim, Kerim Baran with SolarAcademy. I am here today with Billy Christie of Trina Solar. Billy is Director of Engineering at Trina. We’re both joining the show today from San Diego, sunny San Diego, and we will talk about Trina, which is one of the main, largest, oldest solar module manufacturers in the world.

But before we get into Trina, and its latest technology innovations, especially as it relates to extreme weather conditions, resilience- related products is really what we’re going to talk about, I want to talk a little bit about Billy’s background, as well. 

Billy, can you tell us a little bit about how you found yourself here in San Diego working for Trina? Maybe we start earlier on in your career or education and what brought you.

Billy: For sure. Thanks for having me, Kerim. I actually grew up in New York. Out on Long Island, I went to school in upstate New York, state school called SUNY Binghamton. It’s a great school.

Great school, but very cold and snowy and rainy and miserable. After I graduated there, I moved to San Diego. That was a nice change of pace. I actually got my first job in solar while I was driving across the country. My car broke down in Colorado.

It was around Thanksgiving time. I was calling all around trying to find a job. Someone asked if I could be in San Diego again after Thanksgiving. They thought I lived there already. In fact, I did not. But I said, “Yeah, I’ll be there.” And so I got started with SolarCity at that point. For those who don’t know, SolarCity was a big national player, mostly in residential solar, but also some C&I back in the day. That was my story.

Kerim: Biggest players in residential solar, along with Sunrun and some others. Started by Elon, run by his cousins, had its ups and downs, eventually folded under Tesla. But yeah, it definitely did a lot of good things.

Billy: For sure. I started there as a residential PV designer, which was a great way to get my foot in the industry and meet a ton of people. I’m still very good friends with a lot of people I worked with here in San Diego at SolarCity.

I started there as a residential PV designer. My boss eventually became a structural engineer. He got promoted along that track. 

There was an opening for a manager in the resi PV space in San Diego and I was selected for that. About a year in, I was managing other residential designers.

And again, it was kind of a great way to just see how the projects go from origination all the way to construction and dealing with issues after construction and whatnot. All of that came by my desk, which was a good experience. But like you said, the company had some ups and downs, you know, solar in general does, and certainly residential solar.

Eventually, those were not the most fun to deal with. I also just wanted to move to the next best thing, which I saw as commercial solar. I wanted to work on larger projects, different projects.

The residential projects back then got a little cookie cutter eventually. You’re doing 10 designs a day and they all look very similar and just wanted to see something else. I was at SolarCity for around two and a half, maybe three years and then moved to a company called Borrego Solar.

They’re based here in San Diego, but also had a really large presence on the East Coast in Massachusetts and also an office up there in the Bay Area in Oakland. They were an EPC business, so engineering, procurement, construction. They also had a development arm and then eventually built out an O&M arm.

I did everything in the C&I and eventually small scale utility space. I started there as a project engineer and followed a similar path. The company grew a bunch.

They needed someone to step into a leadership position for project engineers. I filled that and then just grew with the company. We brought in some in-house designers, professional engineers, some interconnection specialists.

And I managed all those for the West Coast in the western half of the US. It was a really good experience there, too. The project engineering role I started in, we took the projects from contract all the way until PTO and saw everything that was involved between those two phases.

It was a great way to learn about permitting, construction, RFIs, dealing with issues in the field. Permitting, again, a big nightmare. I dealt with a lot of that.

It really gave me good insight into the C&I and small scale utility side of the industry. But eventually, Borrego stopped performing EPC work. COVID was kind of tough on the supply chain and just tough on EPCs in general.

They shut down back in, I want to say, 2022, end of 2022. I was looking for new opportunities, and that’s when I moved over to Trina.

What I thought would work really well and what has worked really well is bringing my past experience to a module manufacturer. Because I was essentially working for what was a customer of these module manufacturers. Bringing that point of view and my experience, being the voice of the customer within Trina, has worked really well.

What I do at Trina is I work on two distinct separate sides of the business right now that we’re eventually merging towards one package solution. We’ll talk about that near the end of this conversation. But on the module side, which is certainly our bread and butter and what we’re known for, I manage the US-based product management team.

It’s a lot of sales support. It’s getting the products certified as they are developed. It’s a lot of testing with third party agencies, which we’ll talk about. And kind of just being the technical experts within Trina to support our customers when we’re selling products or after they’re sold and folks are installing them. That’s it on the module side. I also am rearing up a tracker division here at Trina.

Again, we’ll talk about this a little more near the end, but Trina’s long-term goal is to be able to provide a complete solution for our customers. They don’t have to go to a bunch of companies to get all the different parts of their projects. We obviously have the modules already.

We have a tracker product that’s been installed across the world for quite a while now, and we have a relatively new storage product, as well. On the tracker side, I manage a team of pre-sales engineers, product managers, and project managers that take the project from early stages, do all the initial design and layout, handle the quoting, take the project through contracting, and then support the logistics of getting the material to site and helping our EPC customers and developer customers build and install these projects.

I see both parts of the business, and it’s been great. 

Why Solar PV Module Resilience against Hail is Critical

Kerim: Thank you very much for that background. Let me dive into one of our main topics today, which is essentially these new resilient PV modules that Trina is putting out in the market. For viewers’ benefit, there’s actually an ebook that we’re going to refer to in this conversation, which is an e-book put out by Trina, downloadable on their website.

If you just Google Trina Solar Environments ebook, you will find it easily. Essentially, this is a new module that is hail-resistant. Can you tell us a little bit about the story behind this, Billy? How it came, what were the customer problem issues you guys were facing and why innovate like this? 

Billy: For sure. Here at Trina, we have a really strong market intelligence team who essentially looks at the upcoming growth of the industry and where that growth will occur in the United States.

What we saw is essentially a lot of the future growth of utility scale solar in particular. In the US it is expected to be in the Texas area and some surrounding states, as well. And that’s great. But a negative of that is that Texas and that corridor from Texas north is one of the most intense hail locations in the entire world.

That’s a new problem that modules, standard modules are 2 millimeter glass, 2 millimeter glass on the back, and they are somewhat hail-resistant. There is an IEC standard that modules have been held to for quite a while now that require hail resistance up to, I think, 25 millimeters. It’s in the ebook so you can check.

But that’s pretty minimal. And with the climate changing over time, as it does, hail events are getting more frequent, and they’re also getting more intense and the size of those hailstones are increasing. We knew there was going to be a lot of growth in the utility sector in this hail-intense area.

We wanted to make sure we had a product that was able to withstand that hail. Another reason that’s really important is that modules themselves are very reliable at this point, Trina modules, certainly, but across the industry, modules do a pretty good job of being reliable across their lifetime of 25 years.

But if you have an intense weather event such as a hail event, suddenly, they can become not reliable. We’ve got stats in the ebook. I think – 

Kerim: I was really impressed by those. I mean, impressed or shocked. I don’t know what’s the right word. But 2% of insurance claims by volume are hail events. But 50% of the dollar losses are hail events also. That is really incredible. Hails are really what most insurance companies are dealing with in terms of coverage.

Billy: Right. I would say a small volume of claims, but a large dollar amount per claim. The events tend to be pretty catastrophic.

That’s obviously bad if you’re a project owner. But it’s also pretty bad for the industry because there’s even, I’ve seen on Twitter, not long ago, pictures of a solar site that was impacted by hail. Suddenly all the modules were torn up.

The racking is all over the place. It looks really bad. It’s not a great look for the industry, which is a green, sustainable industry to have all this material that now needs to be cleaned out.

Recycling of PV modules is still a burgeoning industry. The recyclability isn’t as high as we want it to be in the near future. A lot of that material ends up in landfills, which is certainly counter to what we’re trying to do.

Those stats are historical and that’s before the intense growth that we expect in these hail-rich areas. It’s likely to get worse.

Trina Solar’s Innovations in Hail Resistance and Testing Processes

Kerim: What’s the solution? Is it essentially increasing the glass width on the front side and making a stronger glass like a bulletproof glass or whatever the equivalent of that is? 

Just to put this in perspective, for most viewers’ benefit, I mean, solar panels, I’ve done some solar utility scale solar development in my past. We used to plan 0.5% or half a percent degradation per year over the 20, 25 years of lifetime that you project for these systems, which generally, I mean, talking to some really old decades, old solar people, they all say panels will last 40 years, even 50 years at maybe 70% or 80% efficiency from 40 years ago. And that’s generally the case.

You lose maybe half a percent or even less these days on a yearly basis in terms of the capacity of that system. It used to be 80% warranties. Now, 90% warranties 20 years into the asset life of 25 years. Everybody expects to lose some efficiency of that production capacity, 10% or whatnot. This ebook refers to 5 out of 10,000 faulty panels, too, which is really, if you add up over 25 years, only 1.25%, which is very little compared to the 10% or so degradation that could happen.

These are all normal little inefficiencies that you see through the life of a solar asset. But obviously, when a hail comes, it can rip apart the entire system or just damage all the panels and you’re losing 90% or 100% of the asset. So what is the way to mitigate that, I guess, is the question?

Billy: As you’re saying, we’ve gotten really good at manufacturing modules at this point, Trina and others, to the point that they are reliable, and they will perform as long as they’re not crashed into by a giant ice ball and broken apart. The way we mitigate it, we looked at a couple of different options and there are a couple of different options across the industry, as well.

But I mean, at the end of the day, you are increasing the thickness of the glass essentially to make it less susceptible to breakage and damage from hail. And so our core product is the NE19. We’ll show a slide on that a little later.

Our standard dual glass modules have 2 millimeter front glass and then 2 millimeter glass in the back. The NE19, the hail-resistant module, is 3.2 millimeter front glass with just a back sheet in the back. It’s not dual glass. Glass on the front, back sheet on the back. 

Kerim? Which one? The one in the middle, we’re talking about? 

Billy: Correct. It’s the one on the right of those middle two. NE19RC there. So it’s very similar to our NEG19RC. The cell, most of the BAM, the encapsulant, the frame is all very similar, the same essentially. It’s really just the thickness of the glass that changes, that gives it its hail reliability. So it’s not a major change, but it’s important in terms of dealing with – 

Kerim: How much thicker is that glass versus the regular product? 

Billy: The NEG19 on the left of those two there has 2 millimeter front glass and 2 millimeter back glass. Then the NE19RC on the right there, the hail-resistant, that has 3.2 millimeter front glass and no glass on the back. The reason we did that, other companies are also looking at 2.5 millimeter front glass and 2.5 millimeter back glass, so thickening both the front and the back. We preferred the 3.2 and clear back sheet because if you look at the overall weight of the module, we wanted to beef this thing up without making it difficult to install, difficult to ship, increasing costs in that way. The 3.2 millimeter and then the back sheet is actually less overall glass than 2 millimeter, 2 millimeter.

It keeps the cost and the weight down, which makes it easier to install, easier to ship, et cetera. That was kind of our solution as opposed to the 2.5/2.5, which increases the front glass, makes it less thicker, so less resistant to hail, and then also increases the overall weight of the module quite a bit. 

Kerim: Well, great. Thanks for all that info. One other topic I want to touch on this topic of hail and resistance is how do you guys test this product? Going through the ebook, it seems like quite an intensive process of testing that you guys go through as well to make sure these products are truly hail-resistant.

Can you tell us a little bit about that testing process and then maybe the results? 

Billy: We obviously do a lot of testing internally, but when we’re selling to customers and the industry at large, you need third-party backing, obviously, on your results so that they’re more trustworthy, et cetera. And so there’s two main agencies that we test with.

One is PVEL and one is RETC. And so they have different testing protocols. PVEL’s, it’s very similar to the IEC standard I referenced earlier, which the IEC standard is up to 25-millimeter hail thickness.

The PVEL testing goes up to 55, I believe, maybe even 65 millimeters at this point. But the way they do testing is essentially, you have a module here and you’re impacting it with hail perpendicularly. 

Kerim: Do you throw like a bullet as if you’re shooting, not a bullet, but an ice ball into the panel? 

Billy: Basically, exactly that. And the PVEL method is, again, direct on. I got a 90-degree incident angle directly against the module. I believe it’s seven different locations around the module. 

You’ll do that with the different thicknesses of hailstones, and you’ll essentially see what thickness the module will stand up against and go up in thickness. You’ll start with 25 millimeters, 35 millimeters, 40, essentially up to its failing point. 

Kerim: What’s the speed you throw the ball at? Is it the same speed as you get with gravity, I guess? 

Billy: I don’t know it offhand. It’ll be in the ebook, but it’s essentially you’re looking at the overall energy impacting the module. It’s the thickness and the speed together. You’re seeing that the module can withstand that.

But it’s relatively fast and if you get up to like 55, 65-millimeter hail balls, that’s like the size of a billiard ball. It could do a lot of damage, but if you look at the testing on the ebook, you can pull that up and the 3.2 millimeter glass modules are quite a bit more able to withstand hail than the standard 2/2 millimeter modules.

Kerim: Right. These are like essentially 65-millimeter hail-resistant. 

Billy: Correct. Correct. But you see the stow angle there. That brings in another part of the testing.

Kerim: As the other, I guess, mitigation method that asset owners use to protect their asset is they can, if they have vertical even single-axis trackers, I guess would be enough for that is they turn the panels vertical when the hail is coming down. 

Billy: Correct. Trackers have different stow angles. Those have been around forever. They’re used for wind stow.

If you want to get snow off the modules, you can take them as close to vertical as possible and dump the snow off. Now stow angle is pretty important for hail, as well. Trackers, historically, I believe –

Kerim: Sometimes hail comes down without much warning, and it can happen like in just a few minutes. Are they smart enough to notice that and turn vertical on their own? 

Billy: Some of them are getting towards that. Right now, the industry standard is not necessarily automated on the hail side.

What you would have to do is called a manual stow. You would be looking at weather data. If you think a hail event is coming, you would manually stow at the max angle that your tracker will allow.

Kerim: You can do that, obviously, remotely. Right? 

Billy: Remotely, correct. Different trackers have different maximum stow angles. For a while, the industry standard was 60.

But with the rise of hail, similar to how we’re developing these hail- resistant modules, tracker manufacturers are increasing the maximum angle of their stow in order to be more reliable against it. 

Kerim: More like 75, something like that. 

Billy: I believe 75. At RE+, I think one of the companies mentioned something like 77. It was going from 75 to 77, and it’s very important.

Kerim: Those few degrees can make a big difference. Clearly, the other badly needed intelligence or AI or software capabilities to notice that hail is happening, so you activate a stow really fast because that can save hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry.

Billy: Correct. I’ll talk a little bit about that in a second. But speaking of stow angle, that bridges nicely to the other testing agency we work with, which is called RETC.

Their testing protocol is different from PVEL in the way that they can control the impact angle of the hail against the glass. We’re able to test at, say, 60-degree impact angle, 55, 40, etc. That’s why when you look at that section of testing results on the ebook, it has 65 at, I believe, 60-degree tilt.

We work with both agencies. They have two different protocols, but they’re both very robust and very useful information. 

Addressing Hurricanes and High Wind Zones, Dynamic Load Testing & Compatibility with Trackers

Kerim: I think we were talking about this just before we started the recording, but Trina has put in 200 gigawatts of solar panels.

That was right, which we will show the slide deck. There’s 2,000 gigawatts of solar assets on the ground right now in the world, plus or minus 2 terawatts, believe it or not. Trina has put in almost a tenth of that.

Obviously, you guys are leading the charge in module quality, production, and efficiency. These hail testing and the results you’re getting are impressive, but there are also other extreme conditions that obviously your customers are thinking about. 

Can you touch a little bit on what those are and how you think about them and what are some key things to look at as a developer, as an asset builder? 

Billy: High wind zones are an important thing, as well. There are tornadoes. Southern Florida, the winds get quite high from hurricanes fairly often, unfortunately. That’s a big thing.

PVEL is a testing agency that does hail testing, but they also do a lot of other testing. They have what’s called a PQP, product qualification program, which is essentially a gamut of tests that most modules are run through. All of our modules are run through this program.

Part of that is dynamic load testing. This is particularly important for testing our modules’ resilience to wind speed. We make sure all our modules pass the PVEL protocols there.

That ensures that they’re able to withstand these high wind areas, but part of it is it’s not really just the module. It’s what you’re installing the module on.

It’s really important for module manufacturers to work closely with racking manufacturers across the country to make sure we have a good sense of where we can install our modules, what wind speeds will be successful with all these different products. 

Part of what my team does is work with any of the racking manufacturers, but especially the larger market sharing racking manufacturers across the country in both rooftop and tracker spaces. It’s really important that the module needs to be able to withstand the wind, but the module and its connection to the structure that it’s being built on needs to be able to withstand the wind, as well.

That takes work between the two parties. We do dynamic load testing on the racking that a project will be installed on. That way, we’re able to understand the design pressures or the wind pressures, snow pressures, et cetera, that our module are going to be able to withstand with that kind of combination of module and racking.

Kerim: That partially also probably explains why you guys are getting in the tracker space, because it’s really important to have those two separate manufacturing companies, products be compatible with each other in a really tight way, especially in hurricane-prone areas. 

Billy: Absolutely. The long-term vision is Trina wants to be able to provide the full solution for our customers. You can think of it like if you’re going to buy a laptop, you go and you buy a laptop. You don’t buy a screen and a keyboard and all these different parts and put it all together. You want to go out and buy one thing and be able to use it.

That’s kind of the vision Trina has. We’ve got the modules. We’re obviously well-known for that, bread and butter, as you said, industry leader for quite a while now.

We’ve deployed a lot of modules. Then on the tracker side, we’ve actually had a tracker product for quite a while, have had a good amount of success in Latin America, Europe, internationally, but less so in the States thus far. That’s part of the team I’m growing to increase our market share here in the US. We also have a storage product.

Again, the long-term mission is for our customers to come to us. We’re able to provide all those products. They all work seamlessly together.

Then there are benefits to the customer on the logistics side. They’re only dealing with one company for contracting. Any O&M issues, they come to us.

You’re not having to look at a racking manufacturer and then a module manufacturer, and they might be pointing fingers at each other, “Oh, no, the problem’s on their end.” It’s one neck to choke, essentially, which is beneficial for the customers. 

Trina’s New Texas Manufacturing Facility and U.S. Growth

Kerim: Thanks. Thanks for that background. With that, I would like to pull up a set of slides you shared with me prior to the call to talk a little bit more about the company, Trina, as one of the leading manufacturers in the space, and also some of the things that are in the near future that are exciting and happening in the U.S. market and beyond.

With that, I’m going to just pull up these slides you shared with me. These are, I guess, the high-level key points about the company. I did not know Trina started in 1997. I mean, when I entered the industry in 2009, I remember Trina being one of the top players, and my partner, at SolarAcademy, Nico Johnson and his podcast Suncast, talks about Trina. I do remember Nico was working for Trina at that time, which was a big deal. This is where the number 200 gigawatts of modules has been sold through Trina.

Billy: We’ve definitely been around for a long time, and I can take very little credit for any of those 200 gigawatts. I haven’t been with Trina for that long, but it is super interesting. When I go to RE+ or other shows, there are so many people that will come by and have worked for Trina in the past, because we have been around for so long and successful for that period, as well. It’s cool in that way. Trina’s an international company, but I think something that maybe differentiates us from some of the other players is we do have a really strong U.S. presence. It’s up to 150 plus, as shown here. It’s probably more than that now. 

This slide was put together right after our ASM, which is our annual sales meeting. It was done in Dallas. On the next slide, we’ll see why it was in Dallas, but that picture below has all the people that work here at Trina in the US. That’s important.

Kerim: Where are the key places of operation for the company right now? Is it mostly in Texas and some on the coast?

Billy: Our headquarters in the US is in Fremont, California. We’ve got an office up there, and then we have warehouses scattered across the country. We’ve got one in Houston, I believe one in Long Beach, elsewhere essentially, to house the modules and then ship them from, and then yes, there’s a manufacturing hub we’re building out in Wilmer, Texas, which is near Dallas.

Kerim: Let’s jump to that. I’m just trying to see if there’s any other –

Billy: The one thing I would maybe highlight here again, is the U.S. presence and part of the reason that’s beneficial and plays really nicely with what we talked about earlier, we talked about Texas and that corridor north of it being a big area for hail. But it’s actually one of the biggest in the world. If you’re a company based internationally, and you’re just selling modules into the US, you might not have the foresight to understand, “Oh, there’s a lot of growth happening in this area. This is a big hail area. We need to deal with that.” 

Our presence here in the US and having product managers on the ground, working really closely with customers and understanding their needs is a big benefit to us and it lets us stay on top of the industry and help it grow as it moves into new areas and deals with new challenges.

Kerim: Fremont, California, you said, right, for the headquarters in the US? But obviously, Texas will become a big center of operation as well with this new manufacturing facility. Let’s talk a little bit about this, but I guess I’m trying to remember the size of Trina’s annual production capacity. It’s obviously in the –

Billy: I don’t have it offhand, I believe modules – we have different capacity –

Kerim: Modules –

Billy: Depending where the modules are going. Our U.S. capacity is different than our international capacity, obviously. Historically for the past good amount of years now, all our modules are coming from Southeast Asia, so we have factories in Vietnam and Thailand.

Kerim: Right.

Billy: And I believe the capacity, roughly, I would say around 10 gigawatts, I don’t know that completely offhand. I should. But yes, this factory in Wilmer will be 5 gigawatts, which is a good amount of capacity.

Kerim: That’s a huge addition. Wow. These numbers are impressive. You guys are basically investing close to a quarter billion dollars to improve this existing facility in Texas, and also add equipment into the factory essentially, and it will employ 1,200 plus jobs in the area, ship 12,000 shipping containers worth of goods. It’s really impressive.

Billy: It’s really cool. We went down there as a team last October. Wilmer, if you don’t know where that is, I didn’t, until we started building there. It’s about 20 minutes south of Dallas. 

That was the reason we were in Dallas for the ASM. We took the whole team down there just to see the site, and it’s by far the largest building I’ve ever been in. It’s crazy.

Kerim: That’s where it is. All right.

Billy: That proximity to Dallas is important because, like you said, it’s going to employ a good amount of people. We need skilled labor in that area. Dallas, obviously, is a big hub and has a good amount of universities around there. We plan to source from there as much as possible, and have a strong workforce.

Trina Solar’s Residential and Utility-Scale PV Modules

Kerim: Makes sense. It’s also really impressive that it’s going to create a payroll of 80 million dollars for the region. That is a good thing, as well.

As we come towards the end of our conversation, any other points that we should highlight, Billy?

Billy: I don’t know. I think we did a pretty good job of covering most things here. Maybe if you want to pull up the product portfolio real quick, we could talk through that. We obviously talked about the hail modules, but we’ve got some other great modules, as well.

Kerim: Talk a little bit about these residential products, too, maybe, and you know, smaller.

Billy: Our current product is the NE09RC.05. That’s made overseas currently. In the future, we plan to assemble the NE09RH.05. That’s the module right there, here in the US, at Wilmer. The residential industry in particular, is really very beneficial to have US-made products. Customers want a product in their home that looks good, they can feel good about,  and so having that locally-made product is really important to them. We’re really excited about that.

Kerim: What’s the difference between this premium version of the 430 watt product versus the other one?

Billy: Similar to the hail-resistant module, that premium version has thicker glass, as well. That’s very –

Kerim: Great. The same thing applies for homes, essentially.

Billy: Basically. Hail is going to impact homes, as well. You do want the thicker glass. But there are also other things. I was at RE+, and someone I worked with previously was telling me how they they had modules on the roof, and some kid threw a rock at it, so it damaged it. Also, there’s a lot of modules installed near golf courses. There are various things like that. 

The other benefit, though, is that the thicker glass allows it to have higher downward pressure forces and uplift pressure forces on it. That’s benefitial like we talked about for dealing with wind. This module will be more successful in southeastern Florida, as well.

Kerim: I’m not expecting you to know the answer to this, but just wondering like price-wise, how much more expensive is this just for the panel? Is it 5%, 10% more expensive? Or is it 20%, 30% more expensive?

Billy: Lower than you would think, and in some cases at parity, because again, like –

Kerim: No, because you –

Billy: If you look at the NE19 versus the NEG19RC, it’s 4 millimeters total of glass for the existing 2 millimeter, 2 millimeter, and we’re going down to 3.2 millimeters, total of glass. So again, the components inside are very similar. And so it’s really not a huge price difference. It’s just having the product you want for the area you’re in.

Kerim: Got it. Cool and anything else we should mention about the commercial-size panels? 

Billy: The commercial panels NEG19RC, that’s been our bread and butter. It’s used in both commercial and utility, currently. 

Kerim: The 620 watt panel, basically on here. 

Billy: We’ve had a lot of success with that one. Again, our hail-resistant module is essentially the same innards, the same components with thicker glass, so we expect to have a lot of success with that as well in the hail regions.

The utility modules, we have an older P-Type module, which is DEG21C. But coming out next year, we’re really excited about the one all the way to the right that NEG21C.20, very high power, very high efficiency,  TOPCon N-Type module and we talked about PVEL’s testing before, and the PQP testing. 

Every year, they put out a top performers list, all these different modules are going through this gamut of testing, and they have top performers in all the different categories of testing they do. The NEG21C was a top performer across all the testing categories which I think only either 3 or 4 other modules that we can say met that category or that criteria across thousands of modules tested. So really excited.

Kerim: Are the dimensions of the 720 watt panel, the same as 665 watt panel?

Billy: They are. They’re both using that G12 size cell. If you look at the left there, the G12 is 210 millimeter by 210 millimeter versus the G12R which is 210 by 182, and so both of the utility scale modules, we have –

Kerim: Are using the –

Billy: DEG21 and the NEG21 are both using that larger scale cell format, and as a result they have the same frame dimensions, as well.

Kerim: Wow. Impressive that it has almost 10% more wattage on a panel, the same size with slightly higher, actually has almost 10% more of the efficiency. That’s probably why.

Billy: Well, it’s also a change from P-Type technology. So PERC Technology to the TOPCon N-Type. 

Trina Solar’s Future Product Roadmap, Product Availability, and Closing Remarks

Kerim: That’s why. That explains it all. Well, thank you for that summary. As we finish, when can we expect the hail-resistant products to come, and this 720 watt utility scale product, or any of the other products that are not yet out in the market?

Billy: They’re all slated for Q1 of 2025 or early next year. Coming soon, and the manufacturing center is not quite up and producing just yet. But we’re expecting that by the end of the month here. We’ll have an announcement on that.

Kerim: The Wilmer facility. Wow, that will be active by the end of the year.

Billy: Correct. 

Kerim: Wow, great. 

Billy: Super excited about that. Just manufacturing in the US is super exciting, obviously, being from the US. The solar industry has obviously always been super reliant on overseas companies and overseas manufacturing. Having modules starting to be produced here in the US is really cool. 

Kerim: Are the residential hail-resistant modules also coming in Q1?

Billy: Those NE09RHs will also be in Q1 of next year, and those will be assembled in the US, coming from that Wilmer facility.

Kerim: Awesome. Well, Billy, thank you very much for catching us up on the latest on Trina’s product roadmap and new technologies that you guys are putting out. Thanks a lot.

Billy: For sure. Great, great being here. Thanks for having me.

Kerim: All right, we’ll continue more in the future. Thanks.