Taipei, Dec. 9 (CNA) Eversol Corp., a Taiwanese manufacturer of silicon wafers for the solar industry, signed Friday a memorandum of understanding with West Holdings Corp., a leading Japanese photovoltaic cell maker, to jointly set up a 50-megawatt solar power plant in Japan.
The new power plant is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013, according to Eversol. The move is expected to help the firm to penetrate the Japanese market.
In late 2011, Eversol formed a business alliance with West Holdings to establish a joint venture, E-Solar Co., to build a solar module factory in which it has invested heavily in Matsuyama City, in Japan's Eihime Prefecture.
The solar module factory, a 95-percent automatic manufacture facility that was completed in July, will manufacture high-efficiency low-cost solar modules.
The factory, which has been manufacturing small runs of solar modules since November, is expected to go into mass production in 2013.
Meanwhile, a power plant in the Japanese city of Hiroshima built with investment from E-Solar Co., could generate 1.5 megawatts of electricity annually and is expected to generate revenue of 76 million Japanese yen (US$921,650) per year.
West Holdings Corp., a leading renewable energy company listed on the Jasdaq market, generated 120-megawatts of electricity in 2011, accounting for 10 percent of Japan's market share.
(By Maranda Hsu and Hanna Liu)