SolarWorld AG has revealed that it plans to continue its expansion of U.S. manufacturing operations of photovoltaic cells despite the global economic recession.
The company’s fourth quarter results have yet to be released, but SolarWorld AG (a German company) claims that it grew by over 51% in the first nine months of 2008 while continuing to expand its U.S. manufacturing capacity.The company recently opened a new facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, with nearly 500,000 square feet of semiconductor-grade manufacturing areas, which SolarWorld claims make it the biggest U.S. manufacturer of photovoltaic cells.
"We think we can about a half a gigawatt out of this facility" a year, said Robert Belsner, Managing Director at SolarWorld in Oregon. "It depends on the technology exactly what kind of efficiencies we are getting from the cells."
