Longi Unveils 66c Hi-MO 4m Solar Panels

Chinese solar panel manufacturing goliath Longi has added another variant to its Hi-MO 4m line-up – the 66-cell 66c.

The Hi-MO 4 series was launched back in 2019 and according to Longi, 10 gigawatts of the panels were shipped within a year of mass production. Available in monofacial and bifacial, up to now 60 and 72 cell (half-cut) versions have been available.

In monofacial:

• 60c: 370W – 385W, 20.3 – 21.1% efficiency, 1755 x 1038mm, 19.5kg
• 72c: 450W – 460W, 20.7 – 21.2% efficiency, 2094 x 1038mm, 23.5kg

The 60c was designed for residential rooftops and the 72c for commercial and industrial applications.

The new 66c slots in between these, with Longi stating it can be “can be widely used on rooftops in residential, industrial and commercial applications”. A datasheet for the 66c wasn’t available at the time of publishing (other datasheets here), but Longi provides the following basic specifications for the 66c.

• Capacities: 410 – 420W
• Module efficiency: 20.5% – 21.0%
• Dimensions: 1924 x 1038mm
• Weight: 22kg

It looks like the 66c will be available in Australia, but it’s not clear when.

Longi In Australia

Longi was established in 2000 and its headquarters are in Xi’an, Shaanxi, China. In Australia, Longi’s office is located in North Sydney.

Longi PV modules have been available in Australia since 2017. Its products appear to pretty popular and generally performing well here judging by Longi solar panel reviews submitted to SolarQuotes by Australians who have the modules installed.

The company is currently listed on SQ’s trusted solar brands chart, towards the “entry level” (budget) end of the spectrum.

Longi was ranked no.4 on GlobalData’s top 10 list of manufacturers for 2019 for shipments (9GW). It will be interesting to see where the company ranks for 2020 shipments as in December last year Longi claimed it had set a new record for being the first solar brand to exceed 20GW in shipments of PV modules in a year. A lot of that was shipments for utility-scale projects, but its residential and commercial shipments are also growing. Longi said yesterday it will be expanding the capacity of its dedicated distributed generation production line to 10GW this year.

Among the interesting utility-scale projects recently completed using Longi panels were the 35 MWp Ho Tam Bo and the 35 MWp Ho Gia Hoet 1 floating solar farms in Vietnam, both of which were commissioned in December last year.

With a combined capacity of 70 MW, the projects used 74,469 panels of 470 Wp capacity.

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