Wuxi, China's Suntech Power Holdings [1] (NYSE: STP [2]) said today it signed a deal to buy 510 megawatts of silicon wafers from ReneSola [3] (AIM: SOLA [4]), also based in China.

ReneSola will start delivery of the wafers in January 2008 under the four year agreement.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

"This agreement demonstrates Suntech's ability to continue to secure a high volume of silicon despite the industry shortage," said Zhengrong Shi, chairman and CEO of Suntech's.

Suntech designs, develops, manufactures, and markets photovoltaic cells and modules for electric power applications in the residential, commercial, industrial, and public utility sectors.

"These silicon wafers will supplement our already healthy and diversified supply outlook for the next four years as well as enable us to increase our production of high efficiency solar cells and achieve our market expansion goals faster than we originally anticipated," said Shi.

Last month, Suntech added Irvine, Calif.'s Lumeta [5] and Los Gatos, Calif.-based Akeena Solar [6] (Nasdaq: AKNS [7]) to its list of customers. The company also introduced two new solar modules (see Suntech takes the cake at Solar Power 2007 [8]).

Xianshou Li, ReneSola's CEO, said, "We consider Suntech to be one of our long term cornerstone customers and hope to grow together successfully as we focus on rapidly expanding our capacity to deliver high quality wafers."