March 01, 2010, 12:28 AM EST
By Jason Clenfield
March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp., the Japanese maker of consumer electronics and assembly-line machinery, plans to almost triple production of solar cells in two years to meet demand for renewable energy.
Production capacity may reach 600 megawatts by as early as the year ending March 2012, up from 220 megawatts now, Mitsubishi Electric said in a statement today. The company last month finished construction of a 24,000 square meter (258,000 square feet) plant in northern Japan that may begin operating this fall, the company said.
Mitsubishi Electric joins First Solar Inc., the world’s largest maker of thin-film solar modules, and Sharp Corp. in raising capacity as governments offer subsidies to encourage households and businesses to move away from the fossil fuels that cause greenhouse gas emissions. Global revenue from the cells will climb to $90 billion in 2013 from $20 billion in 2009, according to researcher iSuppli Corp.
Mitsubishi Electric advanced 2.5 percent to 747 yen as of 1:50 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average climbed 0.7 percent.
The new factory, on the same site as Mitsubishi’s only existing solar-cell plant, will start running as early as October, and produce enough cells to raise total generating capacity by 50 megawatts to 270 megawatts in the 12 months ending March 2011, the company said. Stable supply of 50 megawatts is enough to power about 10,000 Japanese homes, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Full Capacity
“Our lines are running at full capacity, 24 hours a day,” Jun Nagasawa, general manager of Mitsubishi Electric’s solar division, said at a press briefing today in Tokyo. “We think this momentum will continue through fiscal 2010 and we’ll be watching to see the direction of government subsidies.”
The global market for photovoltaic cells, from which solar panels are made, will climb to 8,000 megawatts in the fiscal year ending March 2012 from 5,500 megawatts in the twelve months though March 2009, according to Mitsubishi Electric. By that estimate, the capacity target the company announced today would give it 7.5 percent of the total.
Mitsubishi’s solar-panel business made 54 billion yen ($607 million) in sales in the year ended March 31, 2009. Nagasawa declined to say how much revenue the planned expansion may generate.
Toshiba’s Domestic Systems
Separately, Toshiba Corp., Japan’s largest supplier of nuclear reactors, said today it will ramp up sales of residential solar systems from April 1 with the aim of taking 10 percent of the domestic market by the year to March 2013. The panels will be supplied by San Jose, California-based Sunpower Corp., Toshiba said in a statement.
Japan’s solar-panel sales measured by capacity rose to a record in 2009 led by domestic demand after the government offered incentives to switch to renewable power, the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said last month. Sales increased 21 percent to 1,387 megawatts last year, with domestic sales more than doubling to 484 megawatts, according to the association.
The Japanese government in April introduced subsidies to households that install solar panels to promote clean energy and help cut the country’s emissions by 25 percent from the 1990 level by 2020. In the year starting April 1, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s administration plans to invest 40 billion yen to encourage homeowners to buy the panels.
The government says it’s aiming to increase the usage of solar power and other renewable energy systems in homes and industry about 20-fold in the next decade.
Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar plans to expand production capacity to 1,800 megawatts over two years to capture increasing demand, the company reiterated last month.
--Editors: Jonathan Annells, Young-Sam Cho.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jason Clenfield in Tokyo at +81 3-3201-2484 or jclenfield@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
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Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-01/mitsubishi-electric-aims-to-triple-solar-production-update2-.html
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