Signet Solar has committed to building its second large substrate thin film photovoltaic plant in the Sriperembudur Special Economic Zone near Chennai, India. Construction is expected to start later in 2008 on a 300MW facility at an initial estimated cost of $500 million. Shipments from the first plant in India are expected in 2010, the company said. Signet Solar plans to build three plants (1GW) in India over the next ten years.
Even though its first plant in Dresden, Germany has yet to start volume production, the company said that it had already secured more than $400 million in advance orders for the first three years of production.
“We are on schedule to start shipping products from our Dresden, Germany manufacturing plant by Q3 2008 and plan to begin shipments from India by 2010, with a goal of achieving grid parity pricing within the next five years,” said Rajeeva Lahri, CEO and founder of Signet Solar. “We have strong demand in Europe and the US and are pleased that our customers have shown confidence in our engineering capabilities and our global strategy to produce high quality modules on a large scale.”