PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

Sanyo plans Mexican HIT module production in bid to increase US sales

Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. hopes to nearly double its North American market sales by manufacturing modules at a rechargeable battery factory it owns in Monterrey, Mexico.

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Summer HIT: Sanyo expects to start HIT module production in Mexico this summer to cut shipping costs to the North American market.

The 10 MW facility, slated to begin operating in the summer, will produce 5 MW of HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin-layer) modules in 2003, increasing to 9 MW in 2004, says Akihiko Oiwa, chief planner of Sanyo corporate communications. According to Oiwa, the company's US PV sales totaled ¥800 million ($6.5 million) in 2002. The goal for 2003 is ¥1.5 billion ($12.2 million). While Oiwa gave no capacity figures for power, at least 482 kW will be used as part of a 675 kW system on the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco (see 6/2002, p. 17), according to a Dec. 9 Sanyo press release.

For the first year, the Mexican modules – in 167 W, 180 W, and 190 W sizes – will be sold solely through the Sanyo Energy marketing unit in San Diego, as Oiwa expects most of the modules to be sold in California. He says that the company may seek other distributors later. Sanyo may also start selling complete systems, though Oiwa gave no details. Ironically, the HIT cells for the modules, produced in Japan, will use wafers manufactured by Sanyo's California-based subsidiary Solec International Inc., in Los Angeles. According to Oiwa, there are no immediate plans for cell production in Mexico.

Although the Monterrey site was chosen to cut down on module shipping costs to North America, the anticipated reduction in labor costs would have been a bigger factor two years ago when the area was part of a free trade zone. »Still,« says Oiwa, »labor costs are lower than in the United States.«

The Sanyo HIT cell, a monocrystalline silicon wafer sandwiched from two a-Si layers, has an 18.5 percent efficiency, the highest for a mass-produced cell. In August, the Tokyo newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reported that Sanyo would be producing a 190 W module with a record efficiency of 16.1 percent. In Oct. 2000, the reputation of the HIT modules took a hit when Sanyo was caught selling panels with an output that did not meet a Japanese-mandated negative tolerance. Instead of discarding the recalled modules, they were used in the Solar Ark, an impressive structure built at a Sanyo plant in Japan (see 6/2002, p. 22).