It could set the groundwork for a new manufacturing facility in Sarnia that could employ up to 500 people.
Ubiquity Solar has received a $500,000 investment from Sarnia-based Bioindustrial Innovation Canada's Sustainable Chemistry Alliance Investment Fund to establish a $10.3-million pilot plant at TransAlta's Bluewater Energy Park in Sarnia.
Ubiquity Solar has developed a process to produce high-purity silicon at a lower cost than traditional technologies that can be used in both the electronic and PV industries.
"The target that we've set is to build a 10,000 ton plant in Sarnia that would produce enough material to produce four gigawatts of solar panels a year, 50 times more than are at the Sarnia Solar Farm" says Ubiquity President and CEO Ian MacLellan.
"The pilot plant is a three year project and based upon that, we'll go to our expanded pilot plant that would be 60 times bigger in terms of capacity, although it would only be two to three times physically bigger," says MacLellan. "Our goal is to create 500 jobs for the polysilicon related processes and that's still the number we're working with."
In 2014, Ubiquity Solar received $3.1-million in funding from federally-funded Sustainable Development Technology Canada.