Building Solar Production Capacity

December 12, 2004 – Vol.9 No.38

BUILDING SOLAR PRODUCTION CAPACITY.

If a solar cell manufacturer is selling every cell it makes it is adding that equivalent amount of solar generated electricity to the world’s total electricity generating capacity with each cell that moves off the production line. Cell manufacturers measure their output not in the number of cells they produce, but the electric output those cells will generate on an annual basis.

SunPower and Sharp have independently announced they will increase solar cell production to meet rising demand - up to 400 megawatts annually for Sharp, up to 50 for SunPower.

In terms of production capacity (thus electricity generating capacity) 450 megawatts may seem relatively small: It’s the generating capacity of a few large wind farms combined or one smallish fossil power plant.

But, the wind farms and the conventional power plants will be built once. The solar manufacturing plants keep adding new electric generating capacity continuously. It’s as if Sharp and SunPower, for instance, built a new power plant every year, year after year.

Sharp, the world’s largest producer of solar cells, will increase its market lead with new production lines at the company’s Katsuragi Plant in Nara Prefecture, Japan.

The company believes that because of the Kyoto Protocol going into effect, as well as renewable portfolio standards in a number of U.S. states, solar production worldwide, even among competitors, will increase. The company says that about 900 megawatts of solar cells are produced each year globally. Next year the figure could rise to 1100 megawatts they say. (That’s about the size of one large conventional or nuclear power plant.)

SunPower has announced that its increase in production will double its current capacity. The increase will be made at its solar cell plant in the Philippines. SunPower quotes Strategies Unlimited as saying that 990 megawatts of solar cells were produced in 2004.

SunPower's primary product, the A-300 cell achieves a solar conversion efficiency of 21.5 percent, an industry best.

Visit Sharp Solar at http://www.sharp-usa.com/solar and SunPower at http://www.sunpowercorp.com/ .