French startup Holosolis, founded by innovation group EIT InnoEnergy, has announced plans to build a 5GW solar module assembly plant in France.
Other partners in the project include real estate company IDEC Group – which specialises in the rooftop market – and French solar developer TSE, which specialises in agrivoltaics.
Commercial production is expected to start in 2025 with full capacity to be reached in 2027, when it will have an annual capacity of 5GW.
The plant will be located in the northeast of France in Sarreguemine, close to the German border, and aims to employ 1,700 people.
The modules produced at the plant will be focused on three markets: rooftop residential, commercial and industrial rooftop and agriPV, however, the technology used was not disclosed. PV Tech reached out to EIT InnoEnergy to know which technology will be used in the new plant.
Jan Jacob Boom-Wichers, CEO at Holosolis, commenting on the announcement, said: “We will manufacture the most energy efficient modules, incorporating the latest photovoltaic technologies, with the lowest carbon footprint and highest social standards. Scale effects and line automation will allow for a competitive cost to rival the global giants in the industry.”
This is the latest in a series of new solar module assembly plants in Europe that have been announced since the European Commission unveiled its Green Deal Industrial Plan in February, which aims to scale up domestic manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies in the EU.
Upstream activity in France has been moving in the past several months, with startup Carbon set to build a 5GW cell and 3.5GW module assembly plant in Marseille, in the south of France which is expected to start operations in late 2025, while solar company Reden Solar plans to increase its module production capacity in France from 65MW to 200MW a year by 2024.
Moreover, EIT InnoEnergy’s project is part of the initiatives carried out by the European Solar PV Industrial Alliance (ESIA), of which it has been appointed as the secretariat. ESIA is targeting 30GW of manufacturing capacity across the entire value chain in Europe by 2025.