China solar firm plans 1GW production expansion

China’s aggressive push into the world’s solar energy markets is taking another jump forward with China Sunergy’s announcement of a planned one-gigawatt (GW) expansion in its solar cell production capacity.

The company plans to invest 1.8 billion yuan ($278 million) in an expansion project in China’s Yangzhou City, and expects the first 500 megawatts of solar cell production to be ready for commercial operation in the first half of 2012.

The project will focus on production of China Sunergy’s newly developed Quasar photovoltaic cells, which the company claims has achieved peak efficiency of 18.85 percent. The firm aims to exceed 19-percent efficiency in its first 500-megawatt batch of modules, and to reach 20 percent within two years.

“This level of efficiency, produced at this scale, will reduce costs significantly for our customers,” said Jianhua Zhao, China Sunergy’s chief technology officer.