Fresh from it's expansion into the Japanese market by buying MSK Corp, Suntech Power has just announced plans to spend around $60 million to build a research and development plant outside Shanghai, a senior company executive said on Friday.

In a market that is already hot, Suntech is really going places. The company has a 70 percent share of total production of its type of products in China and its global market share is expected to reach about 7 percent this year, up from 5 percent in 2005.

I'm convinced that Chinese manufacturing will pave the way for a much wider scale adoption of solar pv. China already has the lowest cost solar thermal technology by far.

That's why Suntech is definitely a solar stock to keep an eye on.