Where’s Cosimo?
We have to take another look at the layout of the metal
and change the screens a little.
Ok, so we have two screens
– one with a 12-micron opening, and one with a 15.
We can test them.
Let’s start with the 15, then we’ll try with the 12 –
that way we can see how much the quality changes.
Ok, but we need to make some cells,
my guess is around 1000. See what you think.
No problem.
I’ll deal with production, I’ll get access to the machine
and then tell you the test results.
Perfect. Ok, let me know, bye.
Enel is a very important company in the energy field.
It’s the most courageous,
because it was probably the first to invest
in the direct production of energy –
that is, not buying from others but directly producing
photovoltaic panels in-house and really understanding,
engaging with the technology.
We’re here on the production line to do research,
because, as I always say:
we’re standing on the shoulders of giants,
so that production leads to a perfect process:
highly controlled, on which we can then carry out our own tests –
that is, use new materials, layers of specific materials,
but starting out from the basis of a high-functioning cell.
Cosimo is our resident tech expert
– he sets the goals.
We didn’t see eye to eye at first –
I’m a production man, I only think about
how many panels we produce every day,
while he always thinks ahead.
There needs to be constant interaction between present and future,
we have to communicate with each other,
because he’s the one who has the final goal in mind
and understands the technology.
But the best way to use technology
and achieve our goal also depends
on our day-to-day experience in the field.
Efficiency has increased, but as you can see,
it’s a little rough near the metal lines.
Because we had abnormal consumption of the silver paste.
We have to change the formula we’re using in production.
If we can optimize it, tighten things up a bit,
more light will get through and we’ll increase efficiency.
And we’ll also reduce the consumption of silver paste.
Tomorrow I’ll have another run made.
OK.
Technology has changed over the years.
It has led us to become a dynamic company
that has had to reinvent itself internally
and create and develop new technologies
so that we would be at the cutting edge of market demand.
Today we’re developing a completely new technology,
a flagship project for 3Sun.
It’s a bifacial heterojunction technology
that allows us to improve performance,
in terms of the amount of power produced
and stored by the solar panel,
that’s higher than in the past.
We were the first to come up with this technology,
definitely in Europe but also in the world.
We’re now ready for the next step,
which is to build our Gigafactory.
So we have to increase what we’re doing now 15-fold,
because right now we have 200 megawatts,
and we need to reach 3 gigawatts.
As a complete technology factory –
that is, from the solar cell to the photovoltaic module,
we’re among the few such factories in Europe; there are only two or three of us.
We really are trailblazers, in the sense that we’re competing against giants.
The maximum capacity of this line is 200 megawatts:
our competitors make gigawatts,
which means their production is 10-20 times bigger than ours.
Currently, we are David.
Asia – especially China – is Goliath.
Now we have to make sure we protect our ideas
so we can carry them forward,
keep them here, develop them here,
and use them to build large factories here in Italy and in Europe.
I’m a mechanical engineer,
I’ve always been passionate about mechanics and energy.
My career at Enel has always been in the plant construction division,
building plants to produce electricity.
Last year I was offered the chance
to head this big Enel investment project,
which is a very important part of what we read about
in the newspapers as the energy transition –
a process that will enable us to move away from fossil fuels
to the production of electricity using sources
that pollute very little or not at all.
And this opportunity filled me with excitement.
We’ve started with construction,
and we’re in the most important part
of the starting phase of our factory,
that involves building very complex machinery;
so we’ve moved on to the design phase.
We’ve designed the machines,
laid out the specifications,
and detailed how the process will be carried out,
even the automation and process control.
Now we have to transform those plans into reality.
Here we can see a large excavated area
and two machines pouring concrete.
The idea is that here we’ll have five lines,
each with a capacity of 600 megawatts per year.
Just think about what’s here now
and what it will be like when the lines are built…
they’ve spread it out, as you can see,
the white surface incorporates the electro-welded grid,
and now we’ll gradually begin to position
the support structures for our machinery.
We’ll already be starting with a higher efficiency
than what we had when we shut down the line,
because the HJT line has now been halted,
because it has to be extended.
But every year we plan to increase efficiency
and then change over, around the end of 2025,
to the revolutionary Tandem technology.
We’ll go from 24-25%,
we could probably even manage to achieve 26% with HJT alone,
to a value that exceeds 28%,
which is the theoretical limit of silicon.
This is thanks to the fact that silicon captures
a specific portion of the light spectrum, the red portion.
Perovskite, the new layer that will be added to the silicon,
captures the blue portion of the light spectrum:
so we can go beyond 28%, even beyond 30%.
You remember surely better than me
what it was like here before…
It was full of machines here …a hive of activity.
Today, on my way into the workspace,
I saw how empty it is now.
For me this marks, let’s say, the first step towards the Gigafactory.
Of course, the volumes will be completely different.
At maximum capacity,
the factory handled 1000 panels a day.
As a gigawatt factory,
we should be able to manage around 15,000 panels
for two types of different products.
One product designed for the utility scales,
in line with what we’re producing now,
destined for large photovoltaic production fields
and for the first time, a product destined for general distribution,
designed to be installed on the roofs of people’s homes.
This project poses a number of challenges.
It will be the first factory – the first major factory,
because we already have a factory
that produces 200 megawatts a year –
the new one will produce 3,000 megawatts a year.
Enel is also tackling this first challenge with a different set-up.
We’ve recruited a major company which has already been active
on the construction site since March with a project manager,
project controller, safety supervisor
and technical supervisors present on-site every day
to keep an eye on engineering
and the work on the construction site
and above all, they monitor safety.
This external team is guided by a small internal team,
which I lead.
It’s made up of senior staff
from the engineering and construction departments.
We preside over three or four areas:
Project Management: finance, insurance,
procurement, reporting to funding sources, sustainability.
Overall Engineering Management: project engineering,
all the quality procedures and quality of the project as a whole.
And finally, Safety.
It’s a motivated team, a flexible team,
because difficulties and new issues come up every day.
But we’re all driven by this curiosity.
Curiosity about the energy transition.
We know that with every day that goes by,
we’re getting closer to producing the first panel.
It will be more than 5 million modules per year,
so we have to reorganize the whole logistics structure of the site.
Our warehouse can no longer afford
to receive materials only during the day –
we have to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There will be more that 100 trucks a day entering
and exiting the facility every day,
so we have to computerize the whole system.
We need to develop a smart logistics system
in order to have inventories for every movement
of raw materials in real time,
and we also have to figure out how to organize
all the training of the people who will work here.
The most important value of our project is definitely human capital,
and that’s why we’re investing time to try to start selecting
the resources necessary for this project
and understand how each role, each person,
will fit into the organizational structure of the project –
the selection of a personnel team
that will be made up of nearly 1000 people in our factory.
Marcello, I wanted to ask you to explain in more detail
how the machinery is configured,
especially the automation part,
because I wanted to get some ideas for the building of the module line,
for the input of the cells.
We had a meeting with the suppliers just this morning.
In the end, after trying various alignments,
we decided to position them in this area here.
Marcello and I are in charge of technology transfer at the moment
– that is, transferring what we’ve done in the laboratory in recent years
with our external research centers, to the Giga factory.
While the current factory was running,
our group began working on this project in advance
and we’re already doing work for 2025-2026,
when we’ll convert the factory from HJT to Tandem.
It’s a wonderful phase –
we’re really happy to be working on it
because we’re taking an idea
and we’re transforming it into a factory.
During the Covid lockdown,
on a spring afternoon in my garden,
I started working on the configuration
to initially be able to have 1.5 gigawatts of production in this factory.
And then after we managed to find an optimal configuration,
I was asked to try to increase the capacity even more.
Initially 2 gigawatts, until they said to me:
Ok, let’s try and see how many gigawatts
of production we can fit into this factory.
Gradually, after a lot of fine-tuning,
we arrived at the final configuration.
We succeeded in making the most of the available space
to obtain an accessible and operational line
that allowed us to include those improvements, those innovations
that we decided to include in this line,
differentiating it from the previous one.
This investment is a huge investment in Italy.
It’s been years and years since Enel made an investment of this magnitude,
and of this type, in Italy:
Enel invests in the construction of power plants that produce electricity;
but this is a factory that will produce panels to produce electricity.
It’s also a European flagship project,
a very important attempt to build a supply chain for this factory
with materials that come from Europe.
So we’re trying to make ourselves somewhat independent
in the production of solar panels.
If we look at what could be called the technology roadmap
– that is, what is predicted to happen in the next few years –
we’re always among the forerunners.
We’re already working on what was expected to happen in the future.
We are really proud of the machinery that we are acquiring,
of the interconnected system, of the automation.
We’re confident that this will lead to us having a highly efficient factory
that is extremely innovative and sustainable.
My day ends towards evening, around 7:00 or 8:00,
often with a walk around the construction site.
Because it’s also a beautiful time of day with a special light
that lets you see the calm after the storm of the day.
We have as many as 20-25 vehicles
moving around the site at any given time.
Seeing this peacefulness take over the building site in the evening
I’ve accomplished a day’s work,
a day’s progress, a day that’s complete.
And that’s satisfying.
There’s a new thing that is coming to life:
there isn’t an old thing that is being closed down.
There’s growth, but there isn’t a reduction.
There’s enthusiasm to innovate
and to see what needs to be done next, and that’s great.
If we want the most wonderful thing,
which is to see that, from technology that began life ten/twelve years ago,
another form of technology is also coming to life
and it already contains the seeds of the technology that will come after that.
And here there’s a story that is really beginning
to be about the long-term development of a technological supply chain
that originates precisely from the know-how that has been deposited in Catania.
And so, it’s in Sicily that there is this seed that keeps on reproducing.