Maxeon’s world-leading solar tech faces hard road ahead

Just a few months ago, Singapore-based solar manufacturer and longtime solar technology leader Maxeon was issuing press releases about the new jobs it would create at a massive $1.9 billion solar cell and panel factory in New Mexico that was to be backed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Today, Maxeon is fighting for its life as it faces financial woes, the departures of its CEO and CFO, and the bankruptcy of its once largest customer, SunPower — all the while confronting plunging panel prices thanks to brutal global competition.

Last month, Maxeon withdrew its annual revenue and profit forecasts and was unable to provide financial guidance for the third quarter. The company’s stock price has fallen 99.14 percent so far this year; it’s already had to perform a 100-to-1 stock split to avoid being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The firm’s higher-priced, higher-efficiency solar panels carry the technological DNA and deep patent portfolio of SunPower, the pioneering U.S. solar company it was spun out of in 2020. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1985, SunPower distinguished itself with world-record solar-cell performance. Maxeon has taken up that mantle itself in recent years and currently makes the most efficient solar panels in the world.

If Maxeon doesn’t survive this turbulent patch, it will join its sister company — and many firms before them — in the realm of shuttered solar leaders.

If Maxeon does survive, the celebrated American intellectual property and patents it owns for the highest-performing silicon solar technology ever to be commercialized will rest in the hands of a Chinese state-owned entity. That could make it difficult for the company to do business in the U.S., as some federal lawmakers have opposed Chinese involvement in other domestic clean energy manufacturing projects.

Over the summer, Maxeon was rescued, in some sense, by its largest shareholder, China’s Zhonghuan Renewable Energy Technology, or TZE, which provided $197.5 million in equity and debt in exchange for a majority stake. This transaction essentially ceded control of Maxeon to TZE’s parent company, TCL, a Chinese partially state-owned entity and electronics conglomerate that builds televisions, phones, and appliances — and now high-performance solar panels.

In an earlier solar bubble and collapse, Chinese conglomerate Hanergy acquired the remains and IP of a number of failed U.S. solar companies including MiaSolé and Alta Devices.

With the shift in ownership, George Guo, formerly of TCL Communication Technology, will become Maxeon’s CEO. Current CEO Bill Mulligan will retire in January.

The ownership change comes as the U.S. rapidly expands its solar-panel manufacturing capacity thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, a shift motivated in no small part by the government’s desire to become less reliant on China’s world-leading solar industry. It also comes amid heightened trade tensions between the countries; the Biden administration has placed steep tariffs on everything from semiconductors to solar panels made in China.

Already, the new ownership structure is creating some hurdles for Maxeon’s U.S. operations. The DOE loan for the firm’s planned New Mexico factory may now be in jeopardy. In August, New Mexico In Depth reported that the DOE will be reevaluating the firm’s balance sheet following the new TZE investment.

“Maxeon remains committed to plans for manufacturing in Albuquerque, and in helping to reshore solar manufacturing in the U.S. The company plans to begin construction later this year, with production targeted for early 2026,” a company spokesperson told Canary Media.

Maxeon has also hit trade-policy headwinds. In July, U.S. Customs and Border Protection indefinitely detained Maxeon panels imported from Mexico to review whether their solar cells were complying with anti–forced labor provisions. Maxeon might also face tariffs on cells imported into the U.S. through its Mexico facility and Malaysian cell factory should either be found to be circumventing duties on Chinese goods.

American patents heading east

Maxeon inherited two core solar-cell technologies from SunPower in the corporate spinout.

The ​“shingled-cell” technology uses silicon solar cells cut into strips that are tiled a bit like rooftop shingles. The result is a panel that has slightly higher performance simply because it packs in more active solar cells; it is intended for utility-scale installations. Much of this IP originates from SunPower’s acquisition of Cogenra and of Solaria’s patents.

Maxeon’s other technology is used to produce high-efficiency panels for residential rooftops. These panels use the so-called interdigitated-back-contact or IBC technology that SunPower was founded upon.

The patents for the original tunnel oxide poly contacts — the technology that underpins these IBC cells — were developed by Richard Swanson’s group at Stanford. Those patents have since expired, but follow-on patents on what’s known as tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) IBC were subsequently granted to SunPower. Maxeon is now litigating to enforce those patents in suits with Hanwha Qcells, Canadian Solar, and REC Solar Holdings.

Maxeon and SunPower picked an odd time in the solar business cycle to falter: While the U.S. residential solar rooftop market is soft because of changes in state policy, utility-scale solar deployment is on a multi-year, multi-state upswing. U.S. solar manufacturing is also in unprecedented territory. In the two years since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, domestic capacity for producing solar panels has nearly quadrupled, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight report issued in September.

Maxeon recently recaptured the world efficiency record for solar panels with its latest generation of IBC technology, managing 24.7 percent efficiency for a full-size panel. Compare that with Chinese vendors such as Longi and Jinko, which top out at 20 to 21 percent efficiency. Canadian Solar specifies its highest-performing panel at 22.8 percent. Matt Dawson, Maxeon’s chief technology officer, told Canary last year that IBC technology might someday be able to produce panels at up to 26 percent efficiency.

There are still technological heights to be reached in the world of silicon solar science, but for all of the U.S.’s pioneering work on solar technology — and recent federal efforts to kick-start the domestic solar manufacturing industry — it’s doubtful now that those heights will be reached with American-owned intellectual property.