Canadian Solar will build its first PV module manufacturing facility outside China in Guelph, Ontario. The $24 million facility, which is being developed by the company’s Canadian Solar Solutions subsidiary, will have an annualized capacity of 200MW once fully operational and is expected to be ready to begin production in early 2011.
The company says that the factory, which will eventually employ 500 workers, will be compliant with the province’s feed-in tariff domestic content provisions.
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Although site selection activities for the new manufacturing facility took place across Ontario, Guelph was chosen as a result of the city’s commitment to making sustainability the hallmark of their community through their Community Energy Initiative, according to the company.
“The community, as a whole, illustrates in many ways their commitment to sustainability,” said Mayor Karen Farbridge. “One great example is Guelph Hydro. In keeping with their desire to help build a sustainable community, they will be installing a 100KW Canadian Solar Solution’s turnkey system on their facility’s rooftop. The system will be operational next year.”
Canadian Solar declined to provide PV-Tech with any further details, including specifics about construction and equipping of the new facility, timing of the production ramp, whether the site is greenfield or brownfield-retrofit, level of automation in the factory, number of production lines, possible new projects in the pipeline, and other topics.
