JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURER Sharp says it plans to provide at least some of the power for its new solar panel factory from its own solar panels fitted to the roof.

Teaming up with local power plant Kansai Electric, Sharp reckons its roof panels could, in the early stages, produce about nine megawatts of power, increasing to about 18 megawatts soon after. 18 megawatts would probably account for around five per cent of the plant’s total energy consumption, which is not incredible, but it’s a good start.

Sharp’s plant, aptly set up in Sakai City, near Osaka, in the land of the rising sun, is apparently costing $69 million to build and should be producing 480 megawatts worth of cells per year by start of production in March 2010. It will specialise in thin-film type solar panels which use only one per cent of the silicon needed for regular crystalline-type panels.

The firm also mentioned it had just signed a memorandum of understanding with Italian utility outfit, Enel, to build a solar panel factory somewhere in Italy, although the wheres, whens, hows and whys were not given.

Google has already given its endorsement of Sharp’s solar power prowess by using Sharp panels to adorn its own roof in Mountain View, which produce 1.6-megawatts of sunny power.

Sharp’s announcement also came on the same day that market intelligence outfit, Isuppli, released a report predicting that by 2010, "worldwide investments in the production of photovoltaic (PV) cells will rise to the same level as those for semiconductor manufacturing by 2010". And we all know how important semiconductors are.

Isuppli reckons that with such massive solar industry growth, production costs for solar panels could be slashed by up to 40 per cent by 2010. This could mean global grid parity, whereby photovoltaic electricity would cost less, if not the same, than power from the electrical grid. Grid Parity is predicted for sunny countries by 2012 and colder, rainier countries like Britain by 2018. So, when it comes to our energy woes, the sun really could come out tomorrow [Take that ginger wig off and get back to your desk, Barak. Sub-Ed]. µ