The manufacturing facilities of Nano-PV Voltech Solar, a joint venture between the US-based Nano-PV and the Voltech group of Chennai, will be inaugurated in a month’s time — luckily coincident with the company getting its first order from another joint venture of the Voltech group in Zambia.

The Voltech group has been manufacturing electrical equipment — a range of products such as transformers, relays and switchgears. (It has nothing to do with Voltec Solar based in Alsace, France.) Last year, it had formed a joint venture with Nano-PV, a company founded in the US by an Indian-American Anna Selvan John.

John claims very high efficiency of the crystalline solar cells produced by Nano-PV technology – the cells are said to be capable of converting 21 per cent of the sun’s energy falling them into electricity, a high number in the solar business. The uniqueness of the technology is that the crystalline silicon wafers have a thin film coat of amorphous silicon on them.

A joint venture of the Voltech group with a Zambian company called Goldberg Associates was announced today.

The joint venture would put up a 10-MW solar plant near Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and will sell the electricity to the state-owned distribution company at a tariff equivalent to Rs 12 for the next 20 years. Solar panels for the plant will go from NanoPV Voltech Solar, Chairman of the Voltech group, M Umapathi, said.

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