Arise Technologies  has completed site acceptance tests for Line 2 at its photovoltaic cell manufacturing plant in Bischofswerda, Germany. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company says it has produced more than 100,000 cells on the line during the commissioning and SAT process, and has begun shipping cells to customers for evaluation.

"Line 2 is designed to produce two- and three-busbar monocrystalline PV cells," said Sjouke Zijlstra, GM/VP of Arise Technologies Germany." We expect that the PV cells produced on Line 2 will achieve efficiencies of up to 18%, once the line is fully optimized. Current efficiencies of Line 2 are at our initial target of up to 17%."

Once the customer evaluation shipments are successfully completed, Zijlstra said that the company "expects to begin ramping up commercial production at a rate that will satisfy the demand from our customers. The experience that we gained in optimizing Line 1 over the last year and the
significant increase in our yield to above typical industry rates will no doubt be helpful to us as we increase our output on Line 2."

"Our inline process uses significantly fewer production people and faster cycle-time compared with the more typical batch process," the GM/VP continued. "The line was delivered on-time and on-budget by our turnkey equipment supplier, OTB Solar."

"The combination of Line 1 and Line 2 provides us with the ability to ship more than 80MW of PV cells per year," said Arise's chairman/CEO, Vern Heinrichs. "We now have the flexibility to meet the requirements of our customers with both high-quality multicrystalline and monocrystalline products."

Arise opened its first cell manufacturing line in Bischofswerda in April 2008.