Green Energy Technology Inc (綠能科技), the nation’s top solar wafer maker, held a beam-raising ceremony yesterday for a new solar-panel plant using thin-film technology, which is expected to begin mass production by the end of the year.
Once construction is completed, the Kuanyin Township (觀音), Taoyuan County-based plant will become the nation’s first, advanced 8.5-generation plant to make thin-film solar cells for customers, Green Energy said in a statement released yesterday.
Green Energy’s 8.5G production line will manufacture solar modules measuring 2.2m by 2.6m in glass panels, company president Lin Hur-lon (林和龍) said in the statement.
This large-size substrate is expected to produce 340 watts of power and its size can be cut to fit various customer needs, he said.
Output at this new plant is estimated at 30 megawatt per annum, with an initial conversion rate of 6 percent, Green Energy said.
Green Energy, which started trading its shares on the main bourse on Jan. 25, gained 1.39 percent to NT$182 yesterday. The company’s share prices have risen 14.47 percent since their debut, as the solar cell industry is backed by rising global oil prices and continued government subsidies in developed countries.
On April 3, the company reported that its first-quarter revenue grew 186.76 percent to NT$1.94 billion (US$63.53 million) from a year earlier. Green Energy made a net profit of NT$620 million last year on revenue of NT$5 billion.
Starting out as a supplier of polycrystalline silicon wafers in 2004 and climbing to the world’s seventh largest maker in this line of business in 2006, Green Energy aims to expand into thin film solar wafers this year, chairman Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山) said in the statement.
The company said it aimed to increase its output of polycrystalline silicon wafers to a range between 200 megawatts and 270 megawatts this year, while it is looking to boost the output of thin film solar wafers to 50 megawatts by the end of next year.
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