KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 14 — Malaysia aims to be among the preferred hub for solar cell manufacturing come 2030, with the establishment of an industry roadmap including module supply chain, supporting industry and system integration.
The Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT) said the roadmap encompassed industrial activities relating to design, research, manufacturing, system integration and deployment of photovoltaic (PV) technologies and products.
Programme Director, Strategic Intelligence and Foresight, Mahalil Amin Abdul Malek said besides these initiatives, the roadmap would also be facilitated with the rolling out of well trained and multilingual workforce. “Although China has already captured a bigger market share, Malaysia still has what it takes to be the hub for solar cell, or PV cell, which converts light to electricity.
“At present, China, in terms of capacity has more than 50 gigawatts (GW), whereas we are just 10 per cent of that (5GW) as of 2014, and by 2017, we are targeting a capacity of 7GW.
“We can reach the target with the availability of workforce who is highly competent in the technical field apart from having multilingual skills. This conducive environment will be attractive for foreign investors to set up manufacturing facilities here,” he told Bernama. The government aims to emerge as the world’s second-largest PV producer by 2020. The current output is 12 per cent of global production and the aim is to reach 20 per cent.
According to market research, in 2015, the total global shipment of solar PV amounted to 50.8GW, with China contributing 48 per cent, Taiwan 20 per cent, Malaysia 12 per cent and Japan 6.0 per cent.
Mahalil Amin also said Malaysia had good policies, infrastructure and incentives that would encourage more foreign direct investments into the sector.
He said a number of big players in the industry, namely Jinko Solar Holding Co Ltd, JA Solar Holdings Co Ltd and Panasonic Corporations already have presence in Malaysia.
He said while efforts were ongoing to make the PV industry in Malaysia exciting, there were still room for improvement. For instance, he said Malaysia was not taking full advantage of its own production, installing only about 220 megawatts (MW), whereas Thailand installed about 3GW.
More than 90 per cent of the local production were for the export market, Mahalil Amin pointed out.
However, he was hopeful that the target to install about 1,250MW solar PV by 2020 would be achieved following two mechanisms approved by the government, namely net metering and utility scale solar. — Bernama
