News of 5-gigawatt manufacturing facility in France

• A solar manufacturing facility with an annual production capacity of 5 gigawatts is to be built in Sarreguemines (Saargemünd) in the French department of Moselle.

Behind the project is Holosolis SAS, a foundation of EIT InnoEnergy. This division of the European Institute for Innovation and also Technology (EIT), which is sustained by the European Union, coordinates, to name a few points, the European Solar PV Sector Alliance (ESIA), which was founded last December. Other Holosolis stakeholders currently consist of French construction project developer Groupe IDEC and also TSE, a medium-sized solar project designer with annual revenue of EUR 27 million ($ 29.3 million).

Participants with manufacturing experience in the solar sector are not named at this time. Other details for the project, at first introduced Monday (May 15) by French President Emmanuel Macron at the government's "Choose France" summit in Versailles, are also thin for now. Manufacturing is set up to begin in 2025, with full capacity targeted for 2027. Holosolis says it prepares to create 10 million modules every year, which would certainly correspond to a targeted module output of 500 watts. The timetable, the specified figure of 1,700 jobs, the site dimension of 50 hectares as well as the-- unofficially-- flowed financial investment sum of EUR 700 million ($ 761 million) suggest, however, that it is not just a matter of producing modules.

The Sarreguemines site was already related to the solar sector in 2020, when the Norwegian REC Solar Holding AS announced a 4-gigawatt module factory here, yet later deserted these plans.