Evergreen Solar SunEdison contract now over $500m

Shares of Evergreen Solar (Nasdaq:ESLR) are up almost 7 percent today on news the company has extended its sales agreement with SunEdison.

The extension increases the total value of the contract to over $510 million, boosting the total value of Evergreen sales agreements announced in the past 16 months to more than $1 billion.

An initial $200 million agreement was announced in July 2006. Under the terms of the contract extension, Evergreen will ship an additional $316 million of photovoltaic (PV) modules to SunEdison through 2011.

The SunEdison agreement is one of six major sales contracts announced by Evergreen Solar since November 2005. The majority of the PV modules will be supplied by its rapidly-expanding EverQ joint venture operation with Q-Cells and Renewable Energy Corp. (REC) in Thalheim, Germany with the remainder supplied by Evergreen’s plant in Massachusetts. A second EverQ manufacturing plant is scheduled to open and reach full capacity in 2007, increasing the total annual output of Evergreen Solar-branded panels to more than 100 megawatts.

Evergreen develops, manufactures and markets solar power products using proprietary, low-cost manufacturing technologies. The company’s patented crystalline silicon technology, known as String Ribbon, uses significantly less silicon than conventional approaches.

SunEdison is a solar energy service provider. The company is headquartered in Beltsville, Md., located between Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC.