PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

BP Solar receives order close to 2 MW from Australian distributor

On Sept. 26, RFI Industries Pty Ltd of New South Wales, Australia, announced that it placed a $10 million AUD ($7.62 million USD) order for about 1.8 MW of panels from BP Solar Australia.

	© BP Solar Australia Pty Ltd.
Home supply: A new order helps BP to keep at least a few more PV cells of its Sydney-based 40 MW factory in Australia.

RFI is the largest distributor of BP panels in Australia. The order, most of which is destined for the Australian market, should be fulfilled by the end of 2006, says Mark Twidell, BP Solar's regional manager for Australia and Asia.

RFI's order boosts the local market for product from BP's Sydney manufacturing plant, which is on track to increase cell production from 40 to 50 MW by the end of this year, says Twidell. However, some 80 percent of BP Solar's products made in Australia are sold to foreign markets, mainly Europe. While there have been concerns that the Solar Cities program proposed by the Howard administration as a replacement for the country's Photovoltaic Rebate Program would strip its domestic market of any vibrancy (see PI 5/2005, p. 98), Twidell says the RFI order proves this assumption is wrong. »The base fundamentals are right,« he says of the Australian PV market. While he concedes that the new PV incentive program may not be ideal, Twidel underscores that the local industry can work with it. »What we are lobbying hard for is Solar Cities as a stepping stone.«