The director of Chinese solar manufacturing giant LONGi has stepped down to focus on the company’s research and development (R&D) operations.
Zhenguo Li informed the company of his resignation in a letter on 23 May and will be replaced – as per a meeting of LONGi’s board on 26 May – by Baoshen Zhong, formerly president of LONGi’s Solar Technology Company.
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Li will now work as director of LONGi’s Central Research Institute and CTO of its Technology Management Centre. The company said the personnel changes will not affect its business operations.
LONGi is one of the leading solar manufacturers in the world, shipping over 16GW of solar modules in the first three months of 2025. Cumulatively, the top four manufacturers (LONGi, JinkoSolar, JA Solar and Trina Solar) shipped over 65GW in Q1 this year.
In the R&D space, LONGi is particularly noted for its work on back contact (BC) solar cell technology. At the Intersolar Europe conference earlier this month, PV Tech saw the company at the forefront of BC offerings. During the show, LONGi launched a white paper on BC technology in partnership with fellow manufacturer Aiko and Radovan Kopecek of the German solar research centre ISC Konstanz. LONGi also recently launched a heterojunction back contact (HBC) technology module for the residential market.
