Mitsubishi to invest $70.7M to expand PV capacity

Tokyo's Mitsubishi Electric announced today that it would pour $70.7 million into an expansion of its photovoltaic cell and module production capacity.

The company, part of the Mitsubishi network of businesses, plans to hit 500 megawatts by 2012, up from 150 MW.

The expansion move comes the same day the company announced it achieved the world's highest photoelectric conversion efficiency rate of 18.6 percent with its photovoltaic inverters.

The company said it was a world record in a 150-millimeter square practical use multi-crystalline silicon solar cell, an improvement of 0.6 percent over its previous record.

Mitsubishi plans to introduce the new multi-crystal silicon cell technology into its mass-produced photovoltaic modules by fiscal 2011.

The company said its investment in photovoltaic cell production at its Nakatsugawa Works Iida Factory and in module production at its Nakatsugawa Works Kyoto Factory is in response to a sharp increase in demand for solar power generation systems.

The company forecasts a global photovoltaic market size of 1,950 MW in fiscal 2008, an increase of 26 percent compared to the previous fiscal year.

Mitsubishi said it has prospects to obtain stable supplies of silicon wafers, which would become the basis of photovoltaic cells.

The company plans to reach 220 MW of production capacity by October 2008 before hitting the 500 MW target in 2012.