Solarvalue and Sunways to cooperate on solar cell development

Aim to produce marketable solar cells from solar grade silicon

With many years of accumulated expertise in monocrystalline and multicrystalline silicon solar cell development and processing, Sunways AG (FRA:SWW) is a stronger research and development partner for Solarvalue AG (XETRA:SV7) than Moser Baer Photo Voltaic Limited (MBPV). MBPV is focused on bringing up turnkey silicon solar cell production lines at the current time.

Here are the dueling company press releases: Sunways and Solarvalue enter into cooperation agreement for the production and processing of solar silicon (Deutsch) or Cooperation between Solarvalue and Sunways (Deutsch).

Sunways said the following:

If the development cooperation can be successfully implemented, both partners will enter into a supply contract.

Since both Sunways and Solarvalue are synergistic companies without overlap, a successful cooperation could lead to even closer ties. Sunways is involved with every step of the solar value chain besides silicon production after Sunways Reactor-Wafer reversal deal with LDK Solar. Almost a year ago, Sunways was on the short list of companies rumored to be interested in investing in Solarvalue.

Check out this Interview with John R. Mott, COO of Solarvalue Proizvodnja d.d., on the status of development in Ruse (Deutsch) on the Solarvalue home page. There is scarce new information here, but the verb tense (see bold I added to the text) of this section is interesting:

We will be producing solar grade silicon samples within the next few weeks. Afterwards, the final fine tuning of the production process will be carried out. Production will then start up within the first half of 2008. This gradual “ramp- up” will minimize risk and keep the rejection quota low. We intend to produce several thousand metric tons of high-purity solar grade silicon in 2008.