Yingli slims down its solar wafers

February 4, 2008

The company says its wafers are now 180 microns thick instead of 200 microns, reducing its polysilicon usage.

Baoding, China-based Yingli Green Energy Holding said today it trimmed the thickness of its solar wafers by 10 percent, cutting the amount of polysilicon needed and reducing the cost of production.

The company said that it successfully reduced its wafers to 180 microns, down from 200 microns, reducing polysilicon usage per watt and increasing wafer output per ingot.

"We are pleased to announce the reduction in our wafer thickness and that over 70 percent of our estimated polysilicon needs for 2008 has been contracted," said Liansheng Miao, chairman and CEO of Yingli Green Energy.

Yingli said most of its supply will be virgin polysilicon.

The company also announced that it expects its photovoltaic module shipment target for the full year of 2008 to be in the range of 255 megawatts and 265 MW.

"Our continued efforts to improve operating efficiencies and reduce wafer thickness have demonstrated the success of our R&D and other strategic initiatives and we believe these achievements will help us to be more competitive in 2008."

Yingli currently has 200 MW of total annual production capacity in each of polysilicon ingots and wafers, photovoltaic cells and photovoltaic modules.

The company plans to expand its capacity to 400 MW by the end of 2008 and to 600 MW by the end of 2009.

Slimming wafer thickness has been a stated cost-cutting strategy of most silicon solar cell manufacturers.