Oerlikon Solar receives follow-up order from Tianwei

Tianwei's capacity expansion comes at a time when the global photovoltaic market (PV) is growing faster than ever. Analyst firm iSuppli predicts the worldwide PV market will surpass 13 gigawatts (GW) in 2010, which is almost twice the size of the market in 2009. The growth is occurring despite reduction of government incentives in key markets, which demonstrates the competitiveness of low-cost crystalline and low-cost thin film technology. Oerlikon Solar's manufacturing solutions provide its customers with a production cost that is comparable to industry cost leaders so that these customers are positioned to offer competitive cost of electricity ($/kWh), and capitalize on the accelerating market growth that will occur as PV energy reaches grid parity.

Over the past years, Oerlikon Solar has made impressive progress on its technology roadmap as it looks to drive down the cost of solar technology. It has achieved more than 50 percent reduction in cost of ownership since 2008. The company is on track to achieve $0.70/W by the end of 2010 with further reduction potential in order to position solar power to be directly competitive with other renewable energy sources, and even conventional energy in growing portions of world energy markets.

"Oerlikon Solar has an established track record of providing the lowest cost of ownership, fastest time to deployment, and the highest reliability in the thin film solar market. With Oerlikon Solar as our continued partner, we trust to reach completion of our planned capacity expansion projects on schedule enabling us to provide higher- quality products with superior module efficiency resulting in lowest cost of electricity. The upgrade will start in January 2011 and will be finalized and ready for mass production by March 2011", states Ma from Tianwei.

"In the competitive solar manufacturer's environment, it is a very strong endorsement for Oerlikon Solar to have a customer like Tianwei continue to invest in our cadmium- free, non-toxic thin film silicon technology," says Jurg Henz, CEO of Oerlikon Solar.


Contact: Head of Corporate Communications Burkhard Böndel T: +41 58 360 96 02 Mobile: +41 79 419 96 69 F: +41 58 360 91 93 burkhard.boendel@oerlikon.com

--- END press release Oerlikon Solar receives follow-up order from Tianwei ---

  OC Oerlikon Management AG, Pfäffikon (company entry)