California’s Nanosolar has announced plans to build a high volume thin film solar cell production factory with a total annual cell output of 430 MW once fully operational, equivalent to approximately 200 million cells per year.

An associated panel assembly factory is expected to produce more than one million solar panels per year.

Nanosolar has started ordering volume production equipment for what it claims will be the world’s largest solar cell manufacturing factory.

Chris Eberspacher, Nanosolar’s head of technology said: “Thin-film printing overcomes the complexity, high cost, and yield and scalability limitations associated with vacuum-based processes. Nanosolar’s technology enables low-cost, high-yield production previously unattainable,” adding: “This allows us to produce cells very inexpensively and assemble them into panels that are comparable in efficiency to that of high-volume silicon based PV panels.”