The Japanese are going bananas on solar cells. Sanyo, Kyocera and Sharp are all ramping up production dramatically.
Sanyo Electric, the world’s fifth largest solar cell producer, plans to nearly quadruple production from 155MW last year to 600MW in 2010.
Kyocera, the world’s No.3 solar cell producer, is planning to triple production capacity by 2010. It expects to make about 350MW per year between now and 2010.
Going for broke, in an attempt to grab 50 per cent world market share, is the world’s No.1 producer of solar cells, Sharp, which is building a factory capable of outputting 1,000MW a year. The factory is expected to cost nearly $175m.
In China, the world’s fourth largest producer, SunTech Power, doubled production last year.
New players are expected to come into the market which is growing at 40 per cent a year.
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