Enel's photovoltaic panel manufacturer 3Sun inks EUR-560m loan to increase to 3 GW

• Enel Green Power's solar panel manufacturing facility in Italy has authorized an agreement to secure up to EUR 560 million (USD 602m) in loans to fund the capacity growth to 3 GW each year, Italian utility Enel SpA (BIT: ENEL) stated on Monday.

The 3Sun factory in Catania, Sicily, presently has the annual capacity to produce 200 MW of heterojunction (HJT) bifacial panels.

3Sun signed a project financing agreement with Italian bank UniCredit to get a EUR-475-million senior term loan as well as an EUR-85-million barrel loan for the development. The senior term loan is partially counter-guaranteed by Italy's export credit agency SACE.

The financing will certainly add to the growth of the so-called TANGO, or iTaliAN pv Giga manufacturing facility, project, focused on building Europe's largest maker of high-performance bifacial PV modules.

The 3Sun factory will certainly initially get a capacity boost to 400 MW in September 2023. The 3-GW-per-year assembly line is anticipated to be totally operational by July 2024, Enel stated.

"With this project we are showing the expediency as well as scalability, consisting of monetarily, of a lasting commercial design that can be replicated for other factories of this type to be created in the coming years in other nations as well," commented Enel CEO Francesco Starace.

Incentivised by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Enel group additionally intends to construct a solar panel manufacturing facility in the United States. The center would certainly have an with an annual capacity of at least 3 GW and possibly approximately 6 GW. The business hopes to introduce building and construction in mid-2023 as well as begin producing the initial panels by the end of 2024.