More Chile PV incoming as Hanwha SolarOne strikes 80MW supply deal

Hanwha SolarOne, subject of a recent merger with its sister company Hanwha Q CELLS, will supply 80MW of solar PV modules to a project in Chile.

The company said this morning from its Shanghai office that it had struck the deal with an unnamed “leading photovoltaic developer” for the project, which is in the Antifagasto region of the Latin American country.

Hanwha SolarOne will deliver 258,000 of its HSL 72 S polycrystalline modules towards the end of the first quarter of this year, due for completion during the second quarter. The modules are part of the company’s S Series designs, which feature four busbars and are designed to work well under weak light and high temperatures, according to SolarOne. Power from the project will be sold through a power purchase agreement (PPA), the details of which have not been revealed.

Hanwha SolarOne managing director Maengyoon Kim said the deal was evidence of the company “strongly expanding” into emerging markets.

A recent PV Tech blog post looking at the deal between Hanwha SolarOne and Hanwha Q CELLS in detail noted that while Hanwha SolarOne remains in the top 10 global PV module supplier lists of many analysts, the company’s fortunes had been on something of a slide ahead of the long-expected merger. The implication being that Hanwha SolarOne will be looking to gain competitive advantage in the long term by utilising technologies by Q CELLS. The deal is estimated to have cost Hanwha SolarOne around US$1.2 billion and, with a planned 3.28GW production capacity, could make the merged company the biggest solar cell producer in the world.

Chile meanwhile appears to be growing new PV generation capacity at a fast rate after the country’s industry was initially slow to get moving. In addition to three projects just completed and announced by Enel Green Power totalling 136MW, other major developers have taken an interest in Chile, including a recent 570GWh deal for SunEdison and a 255MW, US$500 million construction programme by Acciona Energia. The country recently also launched a net metering scheme for PV.