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ARISE Technologies has said that it is now operating Line 1 of its photovoltaic cell plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Bischofswerda, Germany. The company started production in mid-April and is known for its strategy to produce silicon at 7N+ high-purity (99.99999 percent purity) to gain above-average cell efficiencies.

"With the successful completion of the Site Acceptance Tests for Line 1, we are ramping up our production levels to meet our customers' requirement for PV cells. This is another milestone for ARISE in our path towards becoming a leading supplier of PV cells for the solar energy industry," said Bart Tichelman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are achieving the targeted level of 15.0% average PV cell efficiency with a peak efficiency of 15.7%, as well as our targets for manufacturing yield and throughput. We were pleased to present our equipment supplier OTB Solar B.V. of Eindhoven, the Netherlands) with the acceptance letter certifying that it has met our specifications. We appreciate the efforts that they and our management team and staff at the plant have made to enable us to meet our rigorous requirements. In only a few months, we have progressed from producing our first PV cell in mid-April to where we have been able to move to 24/7 production," Tichelman said.

The company said that selected customers were now testing early production cells.