Wacker Schott Solar GmbH, a joint venture between Wacker Chemie AG (WCH.DE) and Schott Solar AG (S9S.DE), officially commissioned a new factory building in Germany Wednesday.
The building will be used to produce solar-grade silicon crystals. After a construction phase of just nine months, Thuringian Minister President Dieter Althaus and Schott AG CEO Udo Ungeheuer handed over the plant’s ceremonial key to the managing directors of Wacker Schott Solar.
The new building, which will be fitted with the necessary production equipment in stages, is a key part of Wacker Schott Solar’s ongoing program to expand multicrystalline silicon wafer production. Overall capacity is expected to reach 275 megawatts (MW) by the end of this year. The company intends to gradually expand its manufacturing capacity to one gigawatt (GW) by 2012. Planned investments of over EUR 300 million in the Jena site are likely to create at least 700 solar jobs, the company said.
The new Jena production facility will employ ingot crystallization technology. This involves melting hyperpure silicon in crucibles and casting multicrystalline silicon ingots by directional solidification. Silicon wafers sliced from these ingots are the starting material for manufacturing solar cells.
Additionally, the roof of the new building features the largest photovoltaic array in Thuringia. The array’s solar modules, with a nominal output of 300 kilowatt, were made and supplied by Schott Solar.
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