March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Mitsubishi Electric Corp., the world's sixth-largest maker of solar cells, plans to double its annual output of the product to 230 megawatts by the fiscal year starting April 2009, the Nikkei newspaper reported.

The company will spend 10 billion yen ($100 million) to increase production at its factory in Nagano, central Japan, and Kyoto assembly plant, the newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Mitsubishi Electric may further increase output to 500 megawatts by 2012, depending on demand and price of raw materials, it said.

Mitsubishi Electric now has a 150-megawatt capacity but sells only about 120 megawatts because of a shortage of silicon, from which the panels are made, the report said.

The company is joining Sanyo Electric Co. in bolstering output to meet growing global demand, especially in Europe, the newspaper reported. The global solar-cell market will probably quadruple to 10,000 megawatts in as early as 2010, it said, citing U.S. photovoltaic industry newsletter PV News.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 18, 2008 20:39 EDT