SunPower inks JV agreement with Chinese, Mongolian groups

A 25% stake for US$15 million.

This is SunPower's investment in the joint venture that will produce and deploy SunPower C7 Tracker systems in Inner Mongolia and other regions in China.

US PV manufacturer SunPower has entered into a definitive joint venture agreement with three of its partners based in Mongolia and China.

The joint venture is worth US$60 million.

The SunPower C7 Tracker combines single-axis tracking technology with rows of parabolic mirrors. As part of the technology, sunlight is reflected onto SunPower Maxeon cells which have a 22.8% efficiency — the world’s most efficient commercially available solar cells, the company claims.

Commenting on the joint venture, Tom Werner, SunPower’s President and CEO stated: "This agreement capitalises on the capability of SunPower's next generation C7 technology to deliver industry leading cost effective energy. Working together with our team of strong local partners who bring different strengths to this project, we believe that we can deploy significant volumes of C7 power plants to help serve China's growing need for clean power. We also expect that this venture will facilitate the development of a low cost, high volume C7 supply chain and accelerate our C7 cost reduction roadmap."

The joint venture is subject to the approval of the Chinese government while initial C7 deployment is expected to begin by the end of 2013.

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