This move will help meet strong demand for its thin-film photovoltaic modules. The plants are expected to be built in the United States and Vietnam and are slated to be completed in 2012. Each new plant will create approximately 600 green jobs and will be designed to accommodate additional production capacity. Negotiations and site assessments are ongoing in both countries and will be finalized and announced at a later date.
The new plans add on to First Solar's previously announced capacity additions, which include eight lines at the Kulim facility in Malaysia, four lines in Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany and two lines in Blanquefort in France. The Ohio plant in Perrysburg also saw an expansion earlier this year. The new plants announced today, combined with these previously announced expansions, will nearly double production capacity from 1.4 GW in 2010 to more than 2.7 GW in 2012 according to First Solar's chief executive officer Rob Gillette.
In addition to the increase in manufacturing employment, First Solar expects to generate over 1,000 construction jobs through the installation of solar power plants from the company's 2.2 gigawatt North American project pipeline.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.