Dubai starts ambitious 1GW PV production plan using
Applied’s SunFab technology
Oct 27, 2008 - Mark Osborne - pv-tech.org
At a two day event held in Atlantis, Palm Jumeirah,
Dubai, Mr. Sultan bin Sulayem, Chairman of Dubai World
(pictured), announced the establishment of a photovoltaics
manufacturing company, dubbed Solar Technologies FZE,
which will build an operate a 130MW production plant
in Dubai’s Technopark. Future plans include establishing
manufacturing facilities in China, Mexico and Bulgaria,
which will increase the total production capacity
to 1GW by 2015.
“The potential of solar energy is unbelievable. The
energy from sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes
is equivalent to the global energy consumption for
a whole year,” commented Mr. Dilip Rahulan, Chairman
and CEO, Solar Technologies FZE. “The mission of Solar
Technologies is to accelerate the adoption of solar
photo voltaic by rapidly expanding manufacturing capacity
and significantly reducing the cost of solar modules
through innovations and manufacturing excellence.
We intend to become one of the largest solar photo
voltaic module manufacturing units in the world over
a period of time.”
The Dubai news follows that of Masdar PV in May 2008
to invest initially $600 million in two separate ‘SunFab’
turnkey module production lines supplied by Applied
Materials in Erfurt, Germany and in Abu Dhabi.
Like Masdar PV, Solar Technologies FZE is planning
to use Applied Materials ‘SunFab’ thin film technology,
as well as becoming a global player. The 130MW plant
planned equates to two SunFab lines and will be operational
by the end of 2010.
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