"Make products that others want to imitate." That was the vision of founder Tokuji Hayakawa, a belief that continues today at Sharp, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2012. Sharp began research on solar cells in 1959, around the time of its 50th anniversary. At the time, solar was heralded as the next new technology after television. This was long before environmental concerns became a popular issue, and despite the establishment of mass-production technologies, the production scale was quite small - accordingly, so were profits. Still, Sharp understood the potential of solar power as a form of renewable energy and continued efforts toward perfecting solar power generation technology. By the end of 2007, Sharp reached 2 gigawatts of cumulative solar cell production volume, more than any other company in the world.
1963: Mass production of solar cells began. In 1966, a 225-watt generating facility was constructed for a lighthouse on Ogami Island in Nagasaki Prefecture, the world's largest solar power system at the time.
1967: Sharp began developing solar cells for use in outer space. At present, Sharp is still the only company in Japan authorized to provide solar cells to JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
1994: Sharp began mass production of solar electric systems for residential use, with subsequent increases in production.
2005: Sharp begins manufacturing thin-film solar cells.
2007: Sharp reaches 2GW of cumulative solar cell production volume by year's end.
2009: Sharp plans to open the Sakai plant, a new facility in Osaka producing thin-film solar cells. The yearly production will be equivalent to 1 GW generation capacity.
