Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K.’s $1.2 billion solar panel factory in Japan has delayed full production until the end of this year or early 2012, Chief Financial Officer Richard Carruth said.
The factory, in southern Japan’s Miyazaki prefecture, will be able to produce 900 megawatts annually, he said today in an interview at the Solar Power International conference in Dallas. That would make it the largest factory in the world making thin- film solar panels with copper-indium-gallium-selenide.
“We’re in the tuning stage,” Carruth said. “Our lines are all on, and we are on target in terms of cost.”
Solar Frontier, a unit of Tokyo-based Showa Shell, said Feb. 15 that the plant had begun production and it would reach full capacity “this summer.”
The company has created panels in a lab that are able to turn 17.2 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity, a record for their so-called CIGS solar products. Solar Frontier, which sells panels with a 12.2 percent conversion efficiency, hopes to reach that higher rate in commercial production as soon as possible, said Brooks Herring, vice president of communications.
“We’re looking at some product design changes,” Herring said in an interview today. “It’ll pull back a limited amount of production.”
‘Nearly sold out’
Solar Frontier plans to produce a total of 500 megawatts of solar modules this year, some of which will be delivered to projects in Japan, Europe, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. “We’re nearly sold out,” Herring said.
Solyndra LLC, the solar company that filed for bankruptcy Sept. 6 after receiving a $535 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee, also made CIGS solar panels.
First Solar Inc., the world’s largest thin-film solar company, uses an alternate technology. It’s made cadmium telluride panels with conversion rates of 17.3 percent in a lab and is working to implement those techniques at a plant in Perrysburg, Ohio, where it expects to deliver products with 15.3 percent efficiency in volume production.
It hasn’t said when they will be available, and the Tempe, Arizona-based company’s average conversion rate was 11.7 percent in the second quarter.
Showa Shell shares fell 1.4 percent to 576 yen in Tokyo.
