The power-generating wall by the sea: LONGi Longjin 3, bringing BIPV back to buildings.

When it comes to Rudong’s photovoltaic story, many people only know about the agrivoltaic project atop its ten-thousand-mu fish ponds. Yet the façade of that four‑story office building by the shore is where BIPV truly deserves to be seen.

In Rudong, Jiangsu, photovoltaic energy is nothing new.

 

According to data as of the end of 2025, this coastal county-level city has already commissioned photovoltaic projects with a total installed capacity exceeding… 236 Ten thousand kilowatts , it is projected that by 2025, the amount of photovoltaic power fed into the grid will reach 21.4 billion kilowatt-hours , equivalent to saving 638,000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2.568 million tons.

Meanwhile, along the shores of the ten-thousand-mu fish ponds at Lingyang Farm, the façade of a four-story office building is contributing to this green transformation in its own way— It takes up no land and requires no foundations, effectively turning itself into a power-generating unit. 。

This marks a quintessential implementation of Longji Longjin 3 in a coastal architectural setting, and serves as a landmark example of BIPV’s transition from an “accessory” to a full-fledged “building material.”

The first challenge for coastal architecture: survive first, then talk about power generation.

Building by the sea subjects construction materials to extreme, almost hellish conditions:

• In a climate characterized by hot summers and cold winters, with intense solar radiation, air-conditioning energy consumption remains persistently high.
• High wind pressure near the coast, with frequent typhoons.
• Salt spray corrosion significantly reduces the service life of ordinary materials.
• The intricate shading created by overlapping upper- and lower-level shading elements is a hidden threat to power-generation efficiency.

The conventional approach is to use glass curtain walls combined with standalone shading curtains, but the former consumes enormous amounts of energy, while the latter often compromises the view. The approach of Longjin 3 is: no additions, only substitutions.

It directly serves as External shading component On the wall, it first serves as a physical thermal insulation barrier. According to a study published in 2025 in the journal “Building Energy Efficiency (Chinese–English),” in regions with hot summers and cold winters, when buildings incorporate photovoltaic glass for vertical shading, air-conditioning energy consumption can be reduced by approximately… 19.95% 。

💡 This means that even before Longjin 3 generates its first kilowatt-hour of electricity, it has already begun saving the owner money on their power bills.

Only then does power generation come into play. By combining HPBC 2.0 cell technology with vertically mounted façade panels, this office building becomes a self-regulating “green energy producer.”

13.6mm double-glazed glass: A rigorous performance benchmark designed for coastal operating conditions.

Many BIPV products fall short because they “look great but perform poorly.” The specification sheet for Longjin 3 is virtually tailored, item by item, to suit coastal environments:

🛡️ Anti-shadow occlusion HPBC 2.0 cells inherently boast exceptional resistance to shading; even under the shadow of gaps between upper- and lower-layer shading panels, they maintain stable performance—something conventional modules struggle to achieve.

💪 Mechanical properties With a double-glazed construction thickness of 6+6 mm (total thickness of 13.6 mm), its mechanical performance is well-suited to harsh conditions such as high wind pressures in nearshore environments.

🎨 Aesthetics and the Light Environment The understated, frost‑white coloration combined with a low‑reflectance exterior printing technique delivers the warm, lustrous texture of silver‑white metal, significantly reducing light pollution while safeguarding the visual comfort of office workers.

✅ Building Material Grade Certification Longjin 3 meets both building‑material and photovoltaic standards, having passed rigorous testing and certification under IEC 61215, IEC 61730, GB 29551, GB 8624, and other stringent protocols, and is accredited by TÜV Rheinland, a leading third‑party certification body.

From “Clipboard” to “Building Materials”: A Paradigm Shift Underestimated by the Industry

Longi positions Longjin 3 as “a colorful building material that generates electricity.”

The weight of these four characters is far greater than it appears.

Many BIPV products on the market are, at their core, “photovoltaic panels shaped like building materials”—driven by a photovoltaic‑first mindset that forcibly fits them onto building façades. By contrast, Longjin 3 takes the opposite approach:

• 5 standard color schemes : Frost White, Pine Cloud Gray, Mount Tai Green, Starry Moon Gold, and Crimson Glow Red—perfectly complementing mainstream architectural color schemes.
• 3 standard styles : 585×1185 mm, 1185×1185 mm, 1185×2085 mm, conforming to the structural modulus.
• 3 types of glass thickness : 5 mm (2 mm double glazing), 8 mm (3.2 mm double glazing), 13.6 mm (6 mm double glazing), flexibly adaptable
• HPBC 2.0 battery : Mass-production efficiency exceeds 27%; eliminating front-side solder‑tab shading can improve light absorption by approximately 2.27%.
• 10-year product warranty (extendable to 15 years), 25-year power output warranty (90.6% power output guarantee), and 10-year color warranty.

When photovoltaics shed their industrial chill and become an integral part of a building’s texture, technology truly recedes into the background, allowing architecture to return to its rightful poise and composure.

As Longi Green Energy wrote in the case study: Many photovoltaic buildings often appear jarring because the PV system is treated as an afterthought rather than an integral part of the architecture. By contrast, Longjin, as a “building material that generates electricity,” can be custom‑designed with the same flexibility as stone or metal panels, seamlessly aligning with the architect’s vision and restoring unity to the façade. "

Why now? A turning-point signal for BIPV.

Zooming out, the establishment of Longjin 3 in Rudong is far from an isolated case.

From the 351 kW Longjin project at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium, to the 1.18 MW Longjin project at Zhongda International, and now to the coastal office building at Rudong Lingyang Farm, LONGi is translating the concept of “building‑integrated photovoltaics” into large‑scale engineering practice through a series of real‑world projects.

The industry’s pullback over the past few years has weeded out two types of players: those who think only in terms of components and lack a deep understanding of architecture, and those who are passionate about building but whose products cannot withstand real-world operating conditions. What remains are products like Longjin 3—solutions that seamlessly integrate “building‑material functionality, power‑generation performance, and scenario adaptability” into a single, robust package.

The true value of the Rudong case lies in the fact that it demonstrates that in… Hot summers and cold winters + coastal Under this dual, stringent set of constraints, BIPV façades can achieve—

• ✅ Uncompromising architectural aesthetics
• ✅ Without compromising functionality
• ✅ It adds up economically.
• ✅ Withstands extreme operating conditions

Only by successfully overcoming these four hurdles can BIPV truly lay the groundwork for large-scale deployment.