Trina Solar Vietnam factory churns out silicon wafers

The Vietnam factory of China-headquartered solar panel maker Trina Solar has rolled out its first silicon wafers slated for domestic consumption as well as exports to the U.S. and Thailand.

The factory in the northern province of Thai Nguyen has a designed annual capacity of 6.5 gigawatts. The first batch of its latest product – 210-milimeter crystalline silicon wafers – were unveiled Wednesday by Trina Solar at the plant.

The company started building the $203 million factory at the Yen Binh Industrial Park in December 2020 as its second manufacturing facility in Vietnam as part of efforts to diversify its supply chain. It employs 700 locals.

Its first Vietnam plant, launched 2017 in the northern province of Bac Giang, makes batteries.

The second plant, which started operations in May 2021, produced solar cells and modules with annual capacities of 4 GW and 5 GW, respectively. The 210-milimeter silicon wafer is its latest product.

A solar wafer is a thin slice of crystalline silicon (semiconductor), which works as a substrate for microeconomic devices for fabricating integrated circuits in photovoltaics (PVs).