PERC vs TOPCon: Suniva funds a 4.5 GW US cell fab

Никита ЛуценкоОснователь и CEO, SOLTECH

Suniva raised US$835 million on 9 September 2026 for a 4.5 GW cell plant in South Carolina - and is building it on PERC, not TOPCon. Here is why.

PERC vs TOPCon is now a commercial question, not just a technical one. On 9 September 2026 US cell maker Suniva said it had raised US$835 million in debt and equity for a 4.5 GW PERC cell plant in Laurens County, South Carolina. The plant lifts its cell capacity from 1 GW to 5.5 GW, and it will not make TOPCon.

Key parameters of the Suniva South Carolina cell plant

Why a new fab in 2026 would choose PERC over TOPCon

The reason Suniva gives is litigation, not physics. Suniva president and COO Matt Card told PV Tech that patent uncertainty around tunnel oxide passivated contact cells drove the decision when the company restarted production in 2024, and that the logic still holds.

"It's no secret that TOPCon has become one of the most litigated solar technologies on the planet," Card said.

The disputes he is describing are real and ongoing, and they involve some of the largest names in the industry: T1 Energy, First Solar, which holds a number of US TOPCon patents, and Chinese manufacturers including Trina Solar. For a company raising several hundred million dollars against a single production line, an injunction risk is a financing risk. PERC has no comparable patent overhang in the United States, which is why Card calls it a "workhorse" product there.

That position is unusual by global standards. Analyst firm Clean Energy Associates described PERC as obsolete in Europe last year, and US cell manufacturer ES Foundry has said it will move to n-type technology in future. Suniva has gone the other way, and in 2025 signed a PERC research agreement with German research centre ISC Konstanz.

What PERC and TOPCon do differently in Gulf heat

The gap that matters in the UAE is thermal, not peak-efficiency. n-type cells such as TOPCon and heterojunction generally carry a flatter temperature coefficient than p-type PERC, meaning they lose less output for every degree the cell rises above test conditions. On a July rooftop in Dubai, where module temperatures run far above the 25 C of the lab, that difference shows up in the annual yield rather than on the datasheet headline.

The second gap is bifacial gain. n-type cells typically have a higher bifaciality factor, so on a reflective surface - a white membrane roof, light gravel, a carport over pale paving - they recover more from the rear side. The third is degradation behaviour: p-type silicon is the substrate associated with light and elevated temperature induced degradation, and mitigating it has always been a manufacturing discipline rather than a solved problem.

None of this makes PERC a bad product. It is the most thoroughly field-proven cell architecture in the industry, with two decades of degradation data behind it. It means the choice is a trade, and in a market where ambient temperatures sit above 45 C for months, the trade tilts towards n-type.

Позиция SOLTECH

This announcement does not change anything a rooftop owner in the UAE can buy next month, and we would rather say so than manufacture a connection. What it does is confirm that the global cell market is separating into two technology tracks, and that is worth understanding before you read a spec sheet.

For a villa or warehouse owner in the UAE: the practical takeaway is a purchasing check. If a quote in this market offers PERC modules at a visible discount, that is a legitimate product, not a scam - but ask for the temperature coefficient, the bifaciality factor and the year-25 performance warranty figure, and compare them line by line against the n-type alternative. In Gulf conditions the cheaper module can be the more expensive kilowatt-hour. Our own standard specification stays n-type for exactly this reason; see how we choose panels и what a system costs in Dubai.

For EPC contractors: stop treating US technology news as a forecast for your own bill of materials. Section 232 duties and TOPCon patent exposure are jurisdiction-specific, and a supply decision that is rational in South Carolina is not rational in Abu Dhabi. The one item worth importing from this story is contractual: ask your module supplier for a written patent indemnity. It costs nothing to request and it is the clause that matters if litigation ever crosses borders.

For investors: the number to watch is not Suniva's 4.5 GW, it is the 26.5 GW of US cell capacity against 77.3 GW of module capacity. That gap is the reason capital is flowing into cell plants, and it is being closed with committed offtake rather than merchant risk - Suniva has pre-sold most of this plant. We read that as a healthy signal for manufacturing discipline and a neutral one for module prices outside the US, where the supply glut has a different cause entirely. We would not extrapolate any Gulf module price movement from this news, and we are wary of anyone who does.

Related reading: why HJT is overtaking TOPCon in the US factory pipeline, ценовой пол по разделу 232 для импортных модулей, and our equipment range. If you are starting from scratch, read how a SOLTECH project works.

Источники

• PV Tech - Suniva raises US$835 million for 4.5GW solar cell facility in South Carolina, 9 September 2026
• PV Tech - 'Workhorse' PERC technology to drive Suniva's scaling up of US solar cell production, 11 September 2026
• PV Tech Research - US PV supply chain bottlenecks: cell capacity against module capacity
• PV Tech - PV Chart of the Week: HJT module production growing the fastest in the US, 11 September 2026