President Lee Woo-hyun of OCI.

OCI will run the production of polysilicon, which is used in solar panels to produce electricity from the sun, as its primary business now that its solar power plants in Knippa, Texas, in the United States, have been sold.

The company said the Alamo 6 Solar Power Plant with the capacity to generate 106-megawatts of power, was sold at the price of 450.7 million won, along with six other similar solar power plants in the United States included in the Alamo Project to ConEdison Development, which the company had been pushing since 2012. The solar power plants have the capacity to generate 400 Mw of power.

“We will continue to seek additional chances in the solar power plant market.” the company said. President Lee Woo-hyun  said the proceeds from the sale of the solar plants will go to strengthening the financial condition of the company and the successful experience will help OCI be more aggressive in the global solar power market as the company wraps up its four-year long project to build solar plants in the United States on a successful note.

From now on, OCI is expected to focus on the specialization of poly silicon. The proceeds of the sale of the solar power plant likely to go to strengthening its plan to take over plants to produce poly silicon, dividing its operation into two sectors, poly silicon and solar power plants.

OCI jumped into the solar power plant business after taking over a project to build a 400 megawatt solar power plant in Texas in 2012, then the largest such project in the U.S. At the time, the price of poly silicon fluctuated greatly while the profits from running solar power plants had been huge.

The Alamo Project involved building solar power plants on a location as large as 1,600 football fields (4,000 acres or 5 million pyeong) at the cost of $1.2 billion.

Under a contract with CPS Energy, the solar power generated from the new plants will be supplied to the energy company for 25 years. Seven more similar solar plants have been completed since 2013, out of which four power pants were. 

The company retained a 20 percent stake in another plant. OCI will directly run the remaining two plants. 

The Alamo Project opened the solar energy age in North America. OCI was the first to develope poly silicon in Korea and enter the new recycled energy industry. 

The company plans to build more solar power plants oversea,s including four in China and a number of in India, but with much smaller power generation capacities.

OCI has decided to make the production of poly silicon its main business because many solar power plant companies have been engaged in boosting the scale of their plants to make their operations bigger. 

The largest solar power plant operator, Barker, has a total power generation capacity of 72,000 tons, followed by GCL with 70,000 tons. OCI has 52,000 tons of solar power plant capacity, far smaller than the two largest ones.

OCI has been moving fast to take over the Tokuyama solar power plant in Malaysia, with a capacity of 20,000 tons. Its total solar power plant capacity would come close to matching that of the largest solar power plant companies. 

Another reason for OCI to change its strategy was that the price of solar power plant electricity is getting close to that of fossil fuel power plants in emerging nations like India.

The Alamo 6 solar power plant built by OCI in Knippa, Texas, the United States of America under the Alamo Project. (Photos: OCI)