Target 20GW! Spanish silicon wafer manufacturer receives major government funding

SUNWAFE SL, a solar ingot silicon wafer manufacturer headquartered in Barcelona, ​​has become one of the proposed winners of the Strategic Economic Recovery and Transformation Project (PERTE) funding support program organized by the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition and Population Challenges (MITECO).

In the funding allocation led by the Spanish Institute for Energy Diversification and Energy Saving (IDEA), SUNWAFE received 199.9 million euros in a total initial grant of 297.3 million euros.

According to SUNWAFE's official website, the company plans to achieve 20GW (2.5 billion pieces) of silicon wafer production capacity at its Spanish factory by 2030. The company has received support from the European Energy Innovation Agency EIT InnoEnergy (now renamed InnoEnergy).

This round of MITECO funding covers 34 projects, all of which focus on supporting the manufacturing of renewable energy equipment in Spain. Most of the funds go to the manufacturing of electrolyzers and other components related to green hydrogen production, in addition to 4 energy storage projects and 1 project involving heat pumps.

In addition to SUNWAFE, there are 6 other solar-related projects selected this time, including photovoltaic module manufacturers European Solar Cell Company, S.L. and MCPV Manufacturing Spain. MCPV recently announced that its Spanish module factory construction project has been successfully selected for this round of government funding. It is worth noting that MCPV is the photovoltaic manufacturing subsidiary of Resilient Group and is building a 4GW heterojunction (HJT) battery factory in the Netherlands.

All the proposed projects are distributed in 12 autonomous regions in Spain.

MITECO said that the funding plan benefits from the simplified approval procedures of the European Commission and is in line with the EU's crisis and transition country aid framework in response to the new geopolitical context of the Russian- Ukrainian conflict and energy transformation.