Sharp Corp announced that it will begin production at its new thin-film Si solar cell plant by 2010 with a production capacity of 480MW per year. The plant is now being constructed in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture in Japan.
The company is planning to boost annual production to up to 1GW while watching the demand trend. The capital investment to facilities totaled approximately ¥72 billion (US$717 million).
In collaboration with Tokyo Electron Ltd, Sharp is currently developing a manufacturing system applicable to large glass substrates, which will be operated at the new plant. The size of the glass substrates used in the system will be 1,000 x 1,400mm, which is about 2.7 times the size of the substrates currently used by the company, 560 x 925mm.
Sharp forecasts that the global solar cell market will reach 15GW per year by 2012. The company estimates that thin-film cells will account for half of the total production, and crystalline cells for the other half. Expecting the increase in demand for thin-film cells, the company announced that it will expand the production capacity of the entire group to up to 6GW per year.
Sharp did not specify when it would achieve its goal of 6GW annual production, but for the first phase, the company plans to increase the annual production to 1GW by April 2010, when the Sakai Plant comes online. At this point, Sakai Plant will take charge of 480MW annual production, and Katsuragi Plant (Katsuragi City, Nara Prefecture) will produce 160MW, while the new plant will handle the remaining 360MW per year.
The company is considering the construction of this new plant in Europe. The future goal of 6GW of annual production will be achieved through the total efforts of six plants located throughout the world, including plants in Sakai City and Europe.
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