Mumbai: Indian conglomerate Tata group on Thursday announced it has invested in Swiss solar-cell maker Flisom, which is setting up a 5 megawatt (MW) plant in Duebendorf for about €25 million ($36.8 million).
Auto to steel maker Tata group did not say how much it invested in Flisom. Capacity at the Duebendorf plant will eventually be scaled up in a phased manner to 100 MW. “Depending on the performance of the company and the growth of the sector we would be looking at furthering our association with them,” said Kishor Chaukar, managing director, Tata Industries Ltd, a fully owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd, the main holding company of the group.
“We see value in this technology and the resultant product not only as manufacturers or sellers but also as users of it,” he said.
The Tata group has earlier this year invested Rs165 crore for an 11.4% stake in Geodynamics Ltd, an Australian geothermal energy startup, through Tata Power Ltd. The group also has a solar energy joint venture, Tata BP Solar Ltd, with British Petroleum Plc.
Flisom will produce flexible, thin-film solar cells using a low-cost manufacturing technology. The solar cells are based on the copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) compound, which absorbs light extremely efficiently. Since tiny amounts of material and energy are required for make these cells, light-to-electricity conversion efficiencies are high.