Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), the nation’s biggest solar cell and module maker, has installed solar panels on the roof of its Taoyuan plant through a joint venture with Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元電機), marking its first foray into solar power generation.
Motech joins local peers that are making inroads into the higher-margin business of constructing solar power plants to minimize the operational risks that come from relying on volatile solar cell manufacturing income.
The move comes as the government provides incentives to encourage renewable energy generation.
The new solar array at a plant in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) has an installed capacity of 7.1 megawatts a year, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
The joint venture, called Teco-Motech Co Ltd (東元茂迪), has reached an agreement with Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) to sell the 2.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity it is predicted to generate each year to the state-owned utility, Motech said.
Teco-Motech was set up at the end of 2016 to focus on building solar plants.
The venture is to generate revenue from electricity sales, the statement said.
“This is the first project Motech has invested in as part of its effort to expand into the downstream solar industry supply chain,” Motech said.
Under the agreemnet, Motech is to supply high-efficiency single-crystalline modules that are assembled into solar arrays, while Teco is to supply solar inverters to convert the solar panels’ variable direct current output into a utility frequency alternating current that can be fed into Taipower’s electricity grid.
The rooftop solar system is operated by a cloud-based management system, which should help boost power generation efficiency by 3 to 4 percent, the statement said.
Seperately, Motech in March last year created a new subsidiary, Motech Energy System Co Ltd (茂捷系統), to step up its expansion into the solar power plant industry.
The new unit has reached a deal with the Pingtung County Government to develop a new solar plant with an installed yearly capacity of 400 megawatts.
Motech said it and its subsidiaries expect to install 50 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity by the end of this year.
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