Photovoltaic panels made in France, of better quality than Chinese products and with a much better carbon footprint: this is the project of ECM-Group, a hundred-year-old Grenoble company (founded in 1928) which employs 500 people in Grenoble and ‘foreign. ECM-Groupe has just invested in “Carbon”, a start-up based in the Loire. The idea is to help him create several very large factories.
France Bleu Isère: you are the president of ECM groupe and you have just invested in a start-up?
Laurent Pelissier : Yes, it’s a start-up which must produce solar panels in France and in Europe and create Gigafactory so that we have this production in our country. The first Gigafactory we want to create will be five gigawatts. So it’s already a beautiful plant. More than 3000 employees.
Do you have the assurance of the viability of these solar panels? Do we know it can be tricky sometimes? We saw the example in Bourgoin with Photowatt…
So we know the viability of these solar panels because we have expertise in both the processes and the machines. We have already sold this type of machine all over the world, so we know that we know how to make solar panels and we know that we must be able to produce them at a competitive price compared to the prices of Asian panels on the French market.
Does your expertise come from the company’s history?
Yes, we have long invested in the processing of silicon, both in semiconductors and in photovoltaics, and also the crystallization of silicon. We worked with the CNRS on innovative products.
Do the solar panels you are going to produce have any particular qualities?
Yes, they will be made with a much lower carbon footprint than what exists on the market, both thanks to the technology, but also because the panels will not travel around the world to come to Europe.
What is the difference in technology?
We will use silicon which has a low carbon footprint because it is produced in Norway, so with clean energy. And then we will do the crystallization in France, where we have an energy mix thanks to nuclear power which also has a low carbon footprint. So the combination of the two will result in a panel with the lowest carbon footprint in the world.
Are there problems today on the supply of silicon?
There are problems with a lot of supplies right now. Silicon is one of them. But there are solutions in Europe.
There is a company that manufactures silicon in Oisans, FerroPem, in Livet-et-Gavet. It can be a source of supply or then it has nothing to do?
It may be a source, but for now, it has nothing to do. Heavy investments would have to be made so that this silicon, which is a metallurgical silicon, can become a silicon for photovoltaics.
What would your market be?
The French and European market first. Everyone thinks that in the European energy mix, photovoltaics makes a lot of sense and it’s a shame that we buy all these panels in China when it is possible to manufacture them in Europe.