SAN DIEGO, California, US, April 25, 2007.
Kyocera will expand its manufacturing capacity for solar modules to 500 MW a year by 2011, in response to global demand.
The company will invest 30 billion yen and has secured supply contracts with silicon producers to ensure the steady increase in production capacity. Kyocera currently claims the record for energy conversion efficiency of 18.5% in 15x15 cm polycrystalline silicon solar cells.
“For the last two years, as we endured a shortage of solar-grade silicon, Kyocera has focused on improving solar-cell quality and energy conversion efficiency,” says Tatsumi Maeda, general manager of the Corporate Solar Energy Group. “Among the world’s fully integrated suppliers that manage every stage of the process, from casting silicon ingot to engineering and supplying complete solar electric generating systems, our goal is to lead the industry in both quality and quantity.”
The contracts for raw material will allow the company to expand capacity throughout its global manufacturing network for solar modules, which includes facilities in Yohkaichi and Ise (Japan), Tijuana (Mexico), Kadan (Czech Republic) and Tianjin (China). Its current annual capacity is 240 MW.
Its Mexican operation produces finished solar PV modules and will increase capacity from 35 to 150 MW. Production area will expand ten-fold with the addition of a second facility in the Tijuana Industrial Park, representing an investment of 4 billion yen when it is completed next March. Its European operation will also increase capacity to 150 MW with an investment of 4 billion yen in the Czech Republic.
The Chinese operation will increase manufacturing capacity to 90 MW by 2011 with an investment of 1 billion yen and its Japanese facility will expand capacity to 110 MW with an investment of 1 billion yen. Kyocera’s Yohkaichi Plant, which produces all of the raw solar cells used by the other four sites for local assembly into finished solar modules, will increase its capacity to 500 MW with an investment of 20 billion yen by 2011.
“The U.S. is experiencing phenomenal public interest in, and acceptance of, solar electricity,” adds Steve Hill of Kyocera Solar. “The majority of Americans want clean energy developed into an affordable, mainstream resource.”
Solar energy is Kyocera’s fastest growing business division and the combined output of all its solar energy manufacturing totalled 760 MW of solar modules from 1975 to 2006. The new 500 MW capacity would allow Kyocera to build complete 3.5 kW solar generating systems for 142,800 new homes each year.
