翻译：
To build the first lighthouse factory in the global photovoltaic industry, Longi Green Energy “intelligent manufacturing” to the future
Why build a photovoltaic “lighthouse factory”?
Zhang Haimeng, vice president of Longi Green Energy, answered that this is the inevitable result of development and will also bring greater development opportunities.
On December 14, 2023, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released the list of the latest batch of “lighthouse network”, and Longi Green Energy Jiaxing Base became the only lighthouse factory shortlisted in the global photovoltaic industry. This is another world first set by Longi Green Energy, the photovoltaic leader, and once again refreshed the milestone of photovoltaic manufacturing.
As a shining pearl of the global manufacturing industry, Lighthouse Factory represents the highest level of intelligent manufacturing and digitalization in today’s global manufacturing industry, and is also a wind vane for the accelerated development of new quality productivity and the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. The shortlisted lighthouse factory means that Longi Green Energy’s manufacturing capacity and level have reached a new level.
Zhong Baoshen, chairman of Longi Green Energy, has said that intelligent manufacturing, especially artificial intelligence and industrial Internet technology, has great potential in allowing manufacturing enterprises to improve production efficiency.
At present, the photovoltaic industry is facing uncertainty from technology iteration, supply chain security, geopolitics and other factors, digitalization and intelligent manufacturing is expected to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the photovoltaic industry to meet the challenges. The forward-looking exploration of Longji Green Lighthouse factory is leading the industry to jump from “manufacturing” to “intelligent manufacturing”, and wade out a new road for the transformation and upgrading of the industry.
1. Visit the world’s first lighthouse factory in the photovoltaic industry
The beautiful water is magnificent, the cultural background of thousands of years, more than an hour’s drive from Shanghai Hongqiao transportation hub, Jiaxing city, is the city of humanity and ancient town, is the birthplace of the red boat spirit, but also in recent years has become the start of green energy, gathering photovoltaic industry chain upstream and downstream enterprises, forming a complete photovoltaic industry chain cluster.
The global photovoltaic industry’s first Longi Green Energy “Lighthouse factory” certified by the World Economic Forum (WEF) is located here. It is reported that Longji Jiaxing base was established in 2020, the main production of Longji BC series high-efficiency solar cell modules, Longji Jiaxing base has a total area of more than 1,300 acres of plants, with 51 intelligent production lines, the overall module production capacity of more than 35GW, is the industry’s largest industrial cluster.
In the first phase factory of Longji Jiaxing Base, we see that in the huge workshop, rows of CNC machine tools and robot arms are busy working, repeating the birth of raw materials to finished products along the process of automatic assembly line; The fully automated AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) logistics vehicle travels along the set track, accurately delivering the semi-finished components to the station of the next process; The digital large screen intuitively shows the operation of each workshop and different stations in the factory, and can accurately identify the production schedule, product quality, efficiency and process of equipment operation.
In this factory with an automation rate of more than 90%, every 18 seconds, a complete photovoltaic module will be off the line, which includes four detection procedures. In stark contrast, workers are rarely seen operating on the production line.
According to the person in charge of Longji Green Energy Factory, Longji Jiaxing Base adopts industrial Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, digital twin and other new technologies on a large scale, and has developed and implemented more than 30 digital use cases to promote intelligent manufacturing, many of which are the first independent patented technologies in the industry.
Financial data show that in 2023, Longi Green Energy R & D investment of 7.721 billion yuan, accounting for 5.96% of the operating income, its research and development investment in the past five years has reached 18 billion yuan, and there are more than 4,000 R & D personnel.
The application of intelligent technology has brought production efficiency and cost reduction to this factory – through the visual traceability system of the entire order process, HPBC products produced in Jiaxing base can shorten the delivery cycle by 84%; Through the optimization and upgrading of the process and the automatic introduction, the process stability of the whole line reaches the best in the industry, and the unit energy consumption is reduced by 20%.
Reflecting the final overall efficiency, the person in charge said that after the implementation of the “Lighthouse factory” project, the number of workers at the base fell by 20%, but the production capacity was greatly improved, manufacturing costs were reduced by 28%, production loss was reduced by 43%, production delivery time was shortened by 84%, and energy consumption was reduced by 20%.
In this regard, the World Economic Forum (WEF) believes that Longi Green Energy Jiaxing base is driven by cost reduction and reduction of solar module delivery time, the deployment of more than 30 fourth Industrial Revolution use cases, and the use of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics technology to improve the efficiency of manufacturing operations, these initiatives have achieved significant results.
2. Lighthouse factory – photovoltaic future manufacturing road
Industrial Internet cloud platform, ERP cloud system, enterprise office IM (instant messaging) tools, digital energy carbon management software…… In response to the complex and changing external industrial environment, in the past two years, the photovoltaic industry has increasingly used digital tools – digital has become the focus of domestic photovoltaic enterprises to further enhance the competitiveness of the direction and “invisible” battlefield.
”According to our statistics, through the application of intelligent technology, the per capita output rate of polysilicon, batteries and components in China from 2016 to 2023 has increased by 3-4 times.” Jiang Hua, deputy secretary-general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, pointed out at a recent meeting that intelligence can bring about the improvement of the production efficiency of photovoltaic enterprises.
Zhong Baoshen also said in Longi Green Energy’s 2023 shareholder letter, “We have used digitalization, artificial intelligence and lean production to greatly improve the efficiency, quality and customer responsiveness of the production system.” These new capabilities upgrade our cost-leading toolbox.”
The lighthouse factory can be regarded as a comprehensive upgrade of digitalization and intelligence. With the advancement of industrial digital transformation, intelligent manufacturing will become a trend, and the lighthouse factory represents the leading level of intelligent manufacturing.
So what makes lighthouse factories unique compared to digital transformation in general? According to Longji, the innovation of Longji Lighthouse factory is not only the transformation of production line automation and intelligence, but the reconstruction of production relations, so that AI intelligence has become the brain of production management, based on big data models, and constantly independent innovation to achieve the true sense of intelligent manufacturing upgrade self-drive.
For example, the OEE(Equipment Integrated Efficiency) management system of Longi Lighthouse factory connects 20 production lines in parallel, so that more than 900 devices and more than 210,000 point data are interoperable in the network, and behind it is a high-level artificial intelligence algorithm that can analyze, follow up and solve problems in daily management. When a component has a quality problem, or the machine suddenly stops, it used to require skilled workers or experts to analyze and view, and now the system can automatically identify and give suggestions for improvement.
In conjunction with this process, Longi has trained more than 300 core backbone scale technical talents, from data analysts, simulation engineers to agile coaches, etc., to support the continuation of its lighthouse capabilities.
After the reconstruction of production relations, the lighthouse factory can play a role not only to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Zhang Haimeng said that when the energy conversion efficiency of photovoltaic modules approaches the ceiling, downstream customers’ attention to product value becomes diversified. In the face of diversified needs, such as moisture and heat protection, ash accumulation prevention, customized dimensions, lighthouse factory can achieve more flexible production, better and faster to meet the diversified needs of customers.
In addition, Zhang Haimeng pointed out that the standardized use cases of the lighthouse factory can be better copied and put to sea, so that no matter the production in any corner of the world, no matter the level of workers, you can produce high-quality and high-level products. Based on the above multiple factors, Longi Green Energy firmly chose to build a lighthouse factory more than a year ago, and finally passed the certification in less than 9 months.
For Longi, the Jiaxing Lighthouse factory is just the beginning. Zhang Haimeng said that in the future, Longi’s other production bases around the world will also take the lighthouse factory as an excellent case to continuously optimize production cost reduction measures and promote a wider range of cost reduction and efficiency.
From the perspective of the entire industry, lighthouses also mean benchmarking, with a strong demonstration effect. The exploration road of “Lighthouse factory” takes the industrial Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies as the new driving force, steadily promotes business transformation and process reengineering, and writes a “model” for the manufacturing industry to reduce costs and increase efficiency through the transformation of digital intelligence.
”The lighthouse factory can help photovoltaic companies consolidate their leading position in the homogenized competition, while deepening the moat of increasing competitiveness.” McKinsey Global managing partner Wang Xiaofan said, “Now the entire photovoltaic industry chain is promoting digital transformation, I believe that in the near future, the entire industry chain will have a lighthouse to continue to lead a wider range of more sustainable transformation.”
3. “Wisdom” to release new quality productivity
The term “new quality productivity” has become a hot word in Chinese economy since it was put forward. The first task deployed in this year’s government work report is to vigorously promote the construction of a modern industrial system and accelerate the development of new quality productive forces. Longji “Lighthouse Factory”, as “the most advanced factory in the world”, is undoubtedly an important representative of the accelerated development of new quality productivity.
Jiang Hua believes that the photovoltaic industry itself belongs to the category of new quality productivity, with high-tech, high efficiency, high quality characteristics. At the same time, the photovoltaic industry has nurtured new quality productivity, driven by technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading.
At present, affected by multiple factors such as capacity expansion and technology iteration, competition in the photovoltaic industry is intensifying, and the industry may face a new round of reshuffle. In this context, technology upgrading and cost reduction are crucial, both of which are the inevitable move to break the inefficient internal volume and cross the industrial cycle, and are also the primary direction to create new quality productivity of the photovoltaic industry.
The pursuit of more advanced technology is also the first principle of photovoltaic, that is, the product with the lowest electricity cost will have the best competitiveness. At present, it is the domestic PV industry N-type battery technology iteration. The new generation of photovoltaic technology, represented by TOPCon, BC and HJT, rapidly occupies a dominant position in the market with significant advantages such as high power generation, high efficiency and lower kilowatt-hour power cost.
Among them, BC battery is the main direction of Longi’s continuous efforts and continuous layout in the past two years. After setting a world record for HBC battery conversion efficiency of 27.09% in December last year, Longi Green Energy renewed this record to 27.30% in May this year. The newly released Hi-MO 9 component conversion efficiency can reach 24.43%, and its HPBC 2.0 battery technology efficiency has exceeded 26.5%, which has touched the ceiling of crystalline silicon battery mass production efficiency.
Shen Wenzhong, director of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, recently said that since the strong involvement of China’s photovoltaic head enterprises (BC) in recent years, the development of BC technology route has far exceeded expectations. The era of large-scale manufacturing of BC components has arrived.
In terms of cost reduction and efficiency increase, the first lighthouse factory in the global photovoltaic industry is another answer sheet submitted by Longi Green Energy for the development of new quality productivity.
”We believe that the photovoltaic industry needs a beacon and needs real intelligent manufacturing, so we forged the Longi intelligent manufacturing model.” Zhang Haimeng said that Longi will upgrade the advanced use cases into industry benchmark standards, provide practical solutions for the photovoltaic industry to become a representative of new quality productivity, and provide high-quality development guarantee for the global energy transition.
Throughout the history of Longi’s development, from single crystal replacement of polycrystal, to diamond wire, RCZ technology breakthrough and promotion and application, and then to BC technology, the advent of Terui silicon wafers, Longi has been actively invested in innovation, and continue to contribute to the high-quality development of the photovoltaic industry. Today, in terms of intelligent manufacturing, Longi is also playing a leading role, writing a key footnote for the transformation and upgrading of China’s photovoltaic enterprises.
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