Canadian Solar – Statistics and Facts

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Published on: November 8, 2020 / update from: November 9, 2020 - Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Canadian Solar – Renewable Energy Environmental Technology – Image: Shutter B Photo|Shutterstock.com

Canadian Solar is a solar panel manufacturer headquartered in Guelph, Ontario. Founded by Shawn Qu, who emigrated to Canada from China in 1987, Canadian Solar has offices in 20 countries including Italy, South Africa and Hong Kong. Until 2011, Canadian Solar was relatively unknown in Canada because a large portion of its photovoltaic solar module manufacturing facilities were located in China. This year, the company opened its first production facility on home soil in Ontario and has since expanded the number of production facilities to 17.

Canadian Solar is a publicly traded company with a pipeline of utility projects around the world. The United States is its most important sales area. In fiscal 2019, Canadian Solar's net revenue fell to $3.2 billion, while U.S.-based competitor FirstSolar generated $3.06 billion in net revenue. Around ten percent of Canadian Solar's operating expenses went into investments in research and development.

One of the company's first products was a small solar charger for servicing car batteries during production for Volkswagen Mexico. Canadian Solar became one of the main suppliers for Germany's 2004 feed-in tariff program, specifically for its rooftop solar projects. Since then, the company's main focus has been on the production of solar modules, solar power systems, off-grid living systems and other specialized photovoltaic (PV) products. In fact, the company is one of the largest solar module manufacturers in the world. By 2020, it said it had delivered solar modules worth over 43 gigawatts. The company's PV modules are mainly made of monocrystalline cells and polycrystalline cells. Monocrystalline cells are made of silicon blocks that have rounded edges, making them one of the most space-efficient cell types. Polycrystalline cells were the first type of solar cells used in the photovoltaic industry. For these cells, silicon is melted and poured into a square shape to minimize waste. Canadian Solar currently offers an extended product and performance warranty that guarantees high power output from its modules.

The American solar developer Recurrent Energy was acquired in 2015.

The production capacity was 4.33 GW at the end of 2015. Of these, 2.7 GW were in the PRC (Changshu/Jiangsu and Luoyang/Henan), 500 MW in Guelph, Ontario and 330 MW in Southeast Asia.