Tindo Solar has supported the federal government’s Solar Sunshot policy as the company plans for the country’s first solar panel manufacturing ‘gigafactory’.

Solar Sunshot allocates $1 billion to support PV manufacturing over ten years and Tindo plans to apply for funding for a project that could create up to 300 jobs.

Tindo chief executive Richard Petterson says Solar Sunshot was a tightly focused funding allocation that relied on production credits, where a manufacturer had to make the goods before receiving assistance in arrears.

“Countries are shifting their energy systems to renewable sources, and they must maintain a level of sovereign control of those new systems by supporting local manufacturing. This means the Australian renewables industry is competing with Beijing, Washington and Brussels,” Richard says.

“The Sunshot program attempts to neutralise this discrepancy and to have some sovereign capability in our emerging energy system. With the ISP estimating 70GW of utility-scale PV and 69GW of distributed PV by 2050 to meet domestic electricity demand alone, the panels market is growing exponentially, presenting a clear opportunity for a domestic industry if supported to scale quickly.”

Richard says the Sunshot program was only in the consultation period, however, Tindo was proposing an expansion of its current facility in Adelaide while building a gigafactory on the East Coast, capable of producing 1GW of premium quality panels per annum.

The $90 to 100 million gigafactory will create 250 jobs and be capable of producing 7000 panels per day and will go some way to meeting the estimated 22,000 panels that will need to be installed each day to meet Australia’s 2030 decarbonisation targets.

Based on experience at its 150MW factory in Adelaide, Tindo estimates that 1GW+ is the scale required to catalyse a domestic downstream supply chain and is in talks with local manufacturers of glass, aluminium, solar cells and other components.