It appears Chinese solar panel manufacturing heavyweights Trina and Jinko are the inaugural members of an exclusive club – manufacturers that have shipped 100GW of modules.
In late March, Jinko Solar declared itself to be “the first company in history” to have delivered 100GW of solar modules globally.
Commenting on the achievement, Jinko CEO Kangpin Chen said:
“We are extremely proud to be the first in the world to achieve 100GW in total module shipments. We want to thank all our teams who have made this possible. We are going from strength to strength, and we will continue to lead the development of next-generation mainstream solar technologies.”
The announcement may have been met by competitor Trina Solar’s bean-counters reaching for their abaci (or abacuses) and frantically opening Excel spreadsheets. Yesterday Trina announced it too had joined the 100 GW club, but made no claim to being the first.
Jinko was founded in 2006 and Trina in 1996 – so the former’s ascension has been significantly more rapid.
How Many Solar Panels Is 100GW?
It depends on the capacity of the panels, which has grown considerably over the years. Back in 2008, sub-200W panels were commonly in use for home solar installations and these days 370 watts is pretty standard. Then there’s monster modules for solar farms that in Trina’s case can be as much as 690W.
But based on 370 watts capacity, 100GW would equal 270.27 million modules – so, more than half a billion panels between the two companies.
100GW is around six times more the total capacity of all small-scale (<100kW) solar power systems ever installed in Australia – more than 16.6GW.
Just as another really rough back-of-virtual-envelope sort of calculation, 100GW of modules could be expected to generate 146 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. That’s 146,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours; around two-and-half times the electricity all Australian households consume annually. In 2019-20, total electricity generation in Australia was around 265 TWh.
Both Brands Popular Panel Picks In Australia
Both Trina and Jinko solar panels have been used in Australia for years and have generally withstood the test of time; backed by pretty solid warranties and a local presence for each company. The brands have been very popular here given their quality, performance and comparatively low pricing points; mainly coming in towards the budget end of the spectrum.
There are 1,335 Trina Solar reviews from customers here on SolarQuotes with an all-time average star rating of 4.7 out of 5. The 1,678 Jinko Solar reviews on SQ also have an average star rating of 4.7.
Both companies are currently listed on our recommended solar panel brands chart. In the SolarQuotes 2022 Installers’ Choice Awards, Trina took out first place and Jinko second in the “best value” solar panels category.
If you’d like to compare the companies’ modules currently available for purchase in Australia side-by-side, try our solar panel comparison table – it has models from both brands listed, along with a bunch of other quality manufacturers.
About Michael Bloch
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In order to see the future we need to look backwards. A little.
How much of this 100GW was shipped in the previous 3 years, year by year?
When do you think they will each hit 200GW, 500GW, 1TW etc?
The scale of the mountain to climb is enormous when considering the figures you gave for Australian electricity generation and then look at in in the context of the rest of the world.
And finally, we ship these panels around the world from a low cost and fast reacting (I wanted to say ‘innovative’ but I am not sure if it is, or whether it is just evolutionary progress) country. Are there signs of cost competitive manufacturers of scale evolving in other areas of the world, or are they minor runners in the 100GW race?
Who is the next 100GW aspirant?
So many questions….