Taiwan`s Photovoltaic Makers to Gain From Japanese Subsidy

Taiwan`s photovoltaic manufacturers are expected to benefit from Japan`s more generous subsidy policy for users of solar energy products.

To boost economy, the Japanese government recently decided to double subsidizing consumers of solar energy products, with the new policy to begin January 2009 to last around 2.5 months.

Industry watchers estimated the new policy to generate a demand for 300MW of solar products valued at over 90 billion Japanese yen a year, more than half of the Spanish market for such products.

Taiwan`s photovoltaic manufacturers including Wafer Works Corp, Sino-American Silicon Products Inc, Gintech Energy Corp, and E-Ton Solar Tech Co Ltd.

Sino-American has been a contract supplier of silicon wafer ingots to Sharp and Sanyo and held a stake in Clean Venture 21, a Japanese solar cell maker. The Taiwanese company recently landed several sizable contracts from Japanese solar energy manufacturers.

Solargiga of China, partly held by Wafer Works, has recently unloaded part of its shares to Sumitomo of Japan and won contracts from leading Japanese solar cell makers. Last year, sales in Japan alone accounted for over 38 percent of Wafer Works` revenues.

Taiwanese industry watchers pointed out that installation of solar equipment in Japan costs around 600,000 yen per KW with the present per-KW subsidy of 70,000 yen, roughly accounting for 10 percent of the total installation cost, estimating that the new subsidy would largely boost the Japanese market.

Source: CENS