Japans Sharp Corp. has announced it is to create a joint venture (JV) with Japanese telecoms group SoftBank to deliver augmented engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services to Japans solar power industry.
SoftBanks SB Energy its Japanese clean solar subsidiary will, as a majority-owner, be an initial beneficiary of the new firm, and the JV may offer Sharp a lucrative avenue back into a solar industry in which it has struggled to turn a profit in recent years.
According to reports in the Nikkei newspaper, SB Energy will begin its EPC services in the spring of 2016, and will also offer panel installation and operations and maintenance (O&M) services to the 30 solar farms it currently operates.
SB Energy Corp. spokesman Kenichi Yuasa told Bloomberg that the JV will leverage the service contacts and logistics of both firms to cut costs and set up lower-priced solar power stations. Initial capital for the JV will be around $1 million, SoftBank which entered the solar industry in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011 confirmed.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.