| LONGi Green Energy Technology | |||||||||||
| Former Names: | Xi'an LONGi Silicon Materials Corporation | ||||||||||
| Foundation: | 14 February 2000 | ||||||||||
| Location: | Xi'an, Shaanxi, China | ||||||||||
| Module: |
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LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. Ltd. (Chinese: link=no|隆基绿能科技股份有限公司) or LONGi Group (Chinese: 隆基股份), formerly Xi'an Longi Silicon Materials Corporation, is a Chinese photovoltaics company, a major manufacturer of solar modules and a developer of solar power projects.
LONGi is the world's largest manufacturer of monocrystalline silicon wafers and is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The company was founded 14 February 2000 by Li Zhenguo as, with its corporate headquarters in Xi'an, Shaanxi. It changed its name in February 2017 to to better reflect its wider manufacturing scope after its acquisition of LERRI Solar, and also dropped the "Xi'an" location as part of the name.[1]
LONGI Silicon Materials is engaged in the research, manufacture and distribution of monocrystalline ingots. It is the world's largest monocrystalline silicon manufacturer, and has rapidly broken world solar efficiency records three times within five months.[3] Fast Company listed Xi'an LONGi Silicon Materials one among "Most Innovative Companies 2013" "for supplying the solar industry with high-quality silicon wafers at low cost".[4] LONGi Solar, a subsidiary of LONGI Green Energy Technology, recently achieved a new industry record with 23.6% conversion efficiency with its P-type monocrystalline PERC (passivated emitter rear cell) solar cells, toward which an increasing number of manufacturers worldwide are migrating.[5] [6] The technique involves taking a silicon wafer, typically 1 to 2 mm thick, and making a multitude of parallel, transverse slices across the wafer, creating a large number of slivers that have a thickness of 50 micrometres and a width equal to the thickness of the original wafer. These slices are rotated 90 degrees, so that the surfaces corresponding to the faces of the original wafer become the edges of the slivers. The result is to convert, for example, a 150 mm diameter, 2 mm-thick wafer having an exposed silicon surface area of about 175 cm2 per side into about 1000 slivers having dimensions of 100 mm × 2 mm × 0.1 mm, yielding a total exposed silicon surface area of about 2000 cm2 per side. The electrical doping and contacts that had been on the face of the wafer are now located at the edges of the sliver, rather than at the front and rear as in the case of conventional wafer cells, as a result of this rotation. This results in making the cell sensitive on both sides, from both the front and rear of the cell (a property known as bifaciality).[7]
Longi Silicon is a member of the Silicon Module Super League (SMSL), which had been a group of big-six c-Si module suppliers in the solar PV industry today until Longi was admitted.[8] The other six members of the SMSL group are Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q CELLS, JA Solar, Jinko Solar, Trina Solar, and GCL.
Longi Silicon has been listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (security code: 601012) since April 2012.[9]
LONGi has been called the fastest growing PV manufacturer in the industry. LONGi annual revenue in 2013 was derived entirely from selling around US$330 million of mono c-Si wafers, but by 2016 that annual revenue had skyrocketed to approximately US$1.67 billion. That was a nearly 94% increase over the 2015 fiscal year, which had itself generated a revenue growth of around 61% over the year before.[10]
LONGi has manufacturing plants in Mainland China,[11] India[12] and Malaysia, and has acquired production facilities from other companies, including from American manufacturer SunEdison.[13] However, Photon.Info reports that Longi Green Energy is mulling an open manufactory in the USA.[14] [15]
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce ruled that Vina Solar, a subsidiary of LONGi was circumventing tariffs for Chinese made products.[16]
In April 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation into LONGi's German subsidiary, focusing on market-distorting subsidies.[17]