Pre‐fabrication gettering and bulk hydrogenation processes are applied to low‐bulk‐lifetime (25 μs) p‐type Czochralski silicon wafers before silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell fabrication, resulting in effective minority carrier lifetime enhancements by a factor of six. On complete SHJ solar cells, this translates to an improvement in the open‐circuit voltage (VOC) of 71 mV, resulting in VOC values as high as 692 mV. This remarkably high VOC suggests that efficiencies approaching 25% could be possible for low‐cost p‐type Czochralski silicon wafers – not the typical expensive, high‐quality n‐type ones with lifetimes of several milliseconds – in the near future. This method is also likely applicable to n‐type SHJ solar cells to reduce the incoming wafer lifetime requirements and to other silicon solar cell structures featuring passivated contacts.