Mitsubishi completes new giant solar cell plant

One of the world's largest solar panel producers, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, has underlined its growing confidence in the global solar market, announcing yesterday that it has completed work on a giant new solar cell factory and is to raise production of photovoltaic (PV) inverters from this May.

The company said that construction has been completed on its second PV cell production plant – its Nakatsugawa Works Iida Factory – in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. It added that the plant was expected to begin production from next year, initially raising module production capacity by 50MW to 270MW before scaling up to support the company's plans to deliver 600MW of annual capacity by 2012.

The new facility is expected to begin manufacturing monocrystalline silicon PV cells from March next year. Mitsubishi said the cells would be based on a new design developed by the firm's engineers, who have claimed that its 19.3 per cent conversion efficiency constitutes a world record for a 150mm x 150mm polycrystalline silicon PV cell.

Mitsubishi expects the global PV market to grow from 5,550MW in fiscal 2009 to approximately 8,000MW by fiscal 2012, predicting that "the introduction of new PV-related stimulus programmes in Japan, feed-in-tariff systems spreading across Europe, as well as projected growth in the North American market", would all serve to drive demand.

The firm also announced yesterday that it is to respond to increased demand in the Japanese domestic market by raising its monthly PV inverter production capacity at its Nakatsugawa Works by 50 per cent to 6,000 units from May.

The solar market is continuing to face conflicting signals over its outlook, with analysts insisting that while long-term prospects look healthy, there are risks that the sector could be badly hit by planned cuts to incentive schemes in Germany and Italy.

In related news, China-based Trina Solar reported that its Q4 financial results had exceeded expectations, despite falling prices for solar panels. The company said that net profits for the last three months of the year hit $49.2m, while sales rose 45 per cent year on year to $313.3m, comfortably beating analysts' forecasts of $284m.

Meanwhile, Germany's largest solar firm, SolarWorld, left investors disappointed last week after issuing a weaker than expected outlook for the year.

The company said that anticipated cuts in Germany's feed-in tariff meant it could only say it expected 2010 revenue to beat 2009 sales of €1.013bn. Investors had expected the company to offer more detailed guidance, predicting sales this year would grow by around 24 per cent.

According to reports, the German government is expected to cut feed-in tariffs for PV solar panels by 16 per cent from July, but the decision is yet to be finalised and solar firms remain uncertain as to how big the cuts will be and how big an effect they will have on the market.