LG To Produce Solar Cells in January As South Korea Gets Green
Despite a glut of production capacity, South Korean TV makers want a piece of the solar action.
Solar panels aren't that different, from a manufacturing perspective, than LCD TVs.
That's one of the reasons South Korean conglomerates like LG Electronics and Samsung aim to become major solar producers. LG today said that it would begin commercial production of solar modules in January. LG's first factory will have the capacity to produce 520,000 modules and it will open another factory in 2011.
Rival Samsung, meanwhile, has said it wants to be one of the largest solar producer by 2015 from a base of effectively zero today.
A portion of the production will go toward solar cells for the domestic market. Approximately 274 megawatts of solar panels were planted in South Korea in 2008, six times the year before, making it the fourth largest market worldwide for solar-panel installations (and the largest one in Asia), according to research firm Displaybank.
But in South Korea, exports are the where the action is. Government policies are geared toward stimulating exports and the large electronics firms derive most of their revenues from North America and Europe.
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