Business
Solar Panel Factories Spark Job Growth Across Africa
Established in 2007, Cape Town-based Setsolar makes and distributes solar panels and other solar components such as regulators, inverters, storage batteries and LED Lights. It also offers training and solar system design. In April 2013, Durban became home to ARTSolar, a locally owned solar panel manufacturing plant considered the largest and most high-tech of its kind in Africa due to its automated Swiss and German equipment.
ARTSolar was established by a group of South African entrepreneurs who wanted to take advantage of the growing interest in renewable energy. Today, their facility in the New Germany Industrial Park has the ability to manufacture about 250,000 solar modules annually.
April 2013 also saw China-based ReneSola and German-based Solairedirect Technologies form a “tolling agreement.” How it works is Solairedirect’s South Africa solar panel factory will assemble 120 megawatts of ReneSola-brand solar modules for three years. The South Africa-based subsidiary of French-owned Solairedirect, Solairedirect SA’s factory, established in 2009, is in the process of doubling its module assembly capacity and has about 90 employees.
The deal with ReneSola includes Solairedirect also buying 20 megawatts of the ReneSola solar panels for use in their South African solar power projects, as well as another 34 megawatts of panels for projects outside South Africa. Under the second round of the South African government’s renewable energy procurement program, Solairedirect is building the nine-megawatt Aurora Solar Project and the 8.8-megawatt Vredendal Solar Project.
In February 2014, a spinoff company from the University of Johannesburg, Photovoltaic Technology Intellectual Property commissioned its thin-film solar module pilot project to Singulus Technologies. Though thin-film solar panels are less efficient, they are very flexible and useful in a number of applications not suitable for traditional glass solar panels.
Technology Intellectual Property’s facility in the Techno Park near Stellenbosch serves as a state-of-the-art research and development facility for perfecting commercial-scale thin-film modules for planned and future solar projects in South Africa, according to Singulus Technologies’ website.
The commercial development of the TiP thin-film process has the backing of the South African government, and financial support from the Industrial Development Corp. and the Technology Innovation Agency of the Department of Science and Technology. Rounding out South Africa’s solar panel manufacturers is China-based Jinko Solar, with a 120-megawatt solar panel production facility that should begin operations in May.
