US module maker drives Sri Lanka factory plans

US module maker drives Sri Lanka factory plans

Sri Lanka
The factory will serve the region but a domestic demand is likely, said Featherston. Source: Flickr/Andrewfromsydney.

A 150MW cell and module factory to be built in Sri Lanka will help an unnamed US manufacturer expand its reach in South East and South Asia, according to the consultancy behind the development.

Patrick Featherston, director of Energy Puzzle, told PV Tech that the site, announced last month, would be used to help his client tap a promising emerging market.

“This particular arrangement spun out of a consulting arrangement with a solar panel maker in the US that was looking to expand its capabilities and its plants into the Asian markets. They were looking for another place to manufacture and it started from there,” said Featherston.

The factory will be all monocrytalline with an option to expand into energy storage products in the future.

The site in the Board of Investment (BOI) trade zone near the southern city of Hambantota, will also have access to a deepwater port. Being within the customs zone also gives the tenants a raw materials and export cost advantage, Featherston explained.

“It is also about the technology we are using. It is a generational step forward in what is currently available and that will allow us advantages on that front too. We looked at several different factors to make sure the factory would be sustainable in the long-term. We waited until several market and financial condition all matched up and now they have,” he said.

A number of smaller PV fabs have been announced in the past few months in Thailand, Ivory Coast and Ghana.

“The move to a distributed manufacturing format is a combination of the local markets you are serving; that doesn’t necessarily mean the actual country, it could be neighbouring countries too. It has to do with the incentives being provided by the country, the cost of labour and the skill level of that workforce. There are government factors too, such as going into Turkey to avoid EU tariffs. No one issue is pushing this forward,” said Featherston.

Initially, it is expected that 90% of the output will be exported to emerging markets in the region but Featherston does not rule out a domestic market in the country in the near future.

“Sri Lanka has a lot of renewable energy from hydropower and a migration to a large penetration of solar is a logical next step but it is a question of when that is,” he said pointing out the vast potential of other countries in the region.

“The best way to look at it is to think about mobile phones and landlines. They didn’t have the infrastructure to address the market for phones so they effectively skipped ahead to the distributed model, rather than doing the centralised one. It’s the same thing now with solar energy.”
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We will organize a protest march against this factory and demonstrate our power by blocking roads, cutting trees , burning tires , killing police officers until they take it to some other country.

 

chinwi wrote:We will organize a protest march against this factory and demonstrate our power by blocking roads, cutting trees , burning tires , killing police officers until they take it to some other country.