Solar fabs: Signet to spend $150 mn in phase 1Ravi Menon / Chennai June 12, 2007Make hay while the sun shines -- US-based Signet Solar is exploring moves to establish an industry-leading solar photovoltaic module manufacturing cost structure for India, targeting grid parity by 2010. The company will spend $150 million in the first phase of developing three solar photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing facilities in India.Signet recently committed a $2-billion corpus, raised on a debt-to-equity funding ratio of 3:1, and spread over a ten-year timeframe for developing its India PV production facilities. The first $150-million tranche of the total investment will be used to set up three 60W production lines (total capacity of 180 MW) at different locations in India by the end of 2009.A total capacity of 1 gigawatt is envisaged out of the 15 PV module production lines planned by 2010 out of the three facilities. The first line is expected to be completed in 18 months and will commence production in early 2009, while the second line is expected to go live the same year, Rajeeva Lahri, founder and chief executive officer, Signet Solar, said.The company is in talks with state governments to finalize the location of its manufacturing facilities and a final picture would emerge in two to three months, Lahri said.
