The company Ilona Mask SolarCity intends to become the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world

Recently, Ilon Musk most often appears in the news in connection with his companies Tesla Motors and SpaceX. However, his interests are not limited to electric vehicles and rockets. Another company Mask, SolarCity, is engaged in solar energy. This company builds solar power plants and is one of the largest in the US, but does not produce solar panels by itself. Or rather, did not produce until June 16, 2014. On this day, SolarCity acquired the manufacturer of Silveo panels for $ 350 million. At the time of purchase, Silveo was planning to build a plant in New York with a total capacity of one gigawatt per year. Musk confirmed that the plant will be built in the next two years.

Thus, SolarCity is becoming one of the leading manufacturers of solar panels in the world. But Mask’s plans are much bigger — in a few more years he plans to build one or more plants, the productivity of which will be much higher. Ilon Musk believes that by 2040, solar energy will produce up to 40% of electricity in the world. To achieve this figure, you need to put into operation 400 gigawatts of solar capacity per year.

Silveo has a unique technology for producing inexpensive and at the same time efficient photovoltaic cells. Their cells have an efficiency of 22% and, with relatively small until recently, production volumes are comparable with less efficient cells that are produced most massively.
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Mask's plans for the construction of huge solar panel factories echo this project of a “ gig factory ” battery. First of all, the mask needs batteries to build a third generation electric car and make it truly massive. However, electric vehicles have very strict requirements for the capacity of batteries per unit mass - as soon as the battery capacity drops to 70% -80% of the original, the battery is no longer suitable for a car, since its mileage from a single charge is noticeably reduced. But at the power plant such a battery can serve for many more years, until its resource is fully developed.

Thus, in a few years, Mask will be holding the largest (or at least some of the largest) plants in the world that produce key components for the construction of solar power plants: panels and batteries. Not surprisingly, after the announcement of the deal, the shares of SolarCity jumped by 17.5% .