Indonesia's largest solar panel factory officially starts production

The Minister of Industry recently inaugurated PT Trina Mas Agra Indonesia's (TMAI) solar panel factory in the Kendal Special Economic Zone in Central Java, which has an investment of more than Rp 1.5 trillion, with an initial operating capacity of 1 GW per year, and will produce about 1.4 million solar panels per year.It adopts the latest i-Topcon technology, with an efficiency of 23%, the maximum output power of each solar panel can reach 720 watts peak, and the panels it produces are one of the largest sizes in the world, and it is also the first integrated factory in Indonesia that integrates the production of cells and modules. After the plant goes into operation, Indonesia's reliance on solar modules and cells imported from China, Malaysia, Vietnam and other countries will be reduced. It will help promote the formation of a local solar panel industry ecosystem in Indonesia, including the use of modules from local supporting industries, accelerating the domestic application of solar cells and wafers, as well as the future development of upstream products such as silicon wafers, ingots and polysilicon smelting. The plant employs 640 workers with expertise in solar panels, who have been trained in China, demonstrating the company's commitment to employee skills development. The Minister of Industry emphasized the urgency of localizing silica sand, which has reserves of more than 330 million tons and potential of 25 billion tons in Indonesia, and the added value of processing silica sand into silicon wafers can be up to 25 times higher, with priority given to the development of the industrial chain supply chain from upstream to downstream in the future. The government has pushed TMAI to achieve the initial 41% target for the proportion of local modules (TKDN), while the Ministry of Industry is preparing a new method for calculating the TKDN value to speed up the process, simplify the mechanism and reduce the cost of certification, a reform that will provide wider scope for new investment and domestic enterprises. The Minister of Industry sees the plant as an important pillar of the domestic industrial sector, with its high-tech panel production not only as a technology provider, but also as a catalyst for the creation of an autonomous national solar energy ecosystem.TMAI's Deputy CEO said that the plant's presence is expected to have a positive impact on Indonesia's realization of clean energy and to help reduce the country's reliance on imports of components for the energy industry.