SANYO Electric and Nippon Oil have finalized plans to form a 50/50 joint venture thin film solar manufacturing company, which will be called SANYO ENEOS Solar Co., Ltd. The JV will develop a cell technology based on SANYO’s, Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer (HIT) solar cells, currently used in its crystalline solar cells. The companies did not disclose any details regarding equipment and material suppliers or the planned manufacturing location.
SANYO ENEOS Solar has been given ambitious production targets based on an initial capital injection of approximately US$225 million. The JV is projected to start volume production in Fiscal Year 2010 with a nominal capacity of 80MW and reached 1GW in production sales by FY2015 and approximately 2GW by FY2020.
The new thin film producer will be run by Michito Igarashi, the former General Manager of SANYO Semiconductor Co., Ltd.