The day after Abound Solar announced that it would build a photovoltaic array on Stanley British Primary School in Denver, Colo., the company said its cadmium telluride photovoltaics received approval from the United Kingdom (U.K.), allowing the company to sell its products there. The certification comes as the company is expanding its production capacity to meet international demand.

While installing a 66 kilowatt system at the Primary School using locally produced Abound Solar’s photovoltaics and other Colorado-built mounting equipment and installers is good for the state, receiving UK MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme) certification for its photovoltaic modules gives the company a leg up on some of its competition. The certification allows Abound’s photovoltaic modules to qualify for U.K. solar feed-in-tariffs, making them marketable in the country.

Russ Kanjorski, Abound’s vice president of marketing explained that the approval should allow the company to sell its ABI modules throughout the British Isles.

“The focus for us in England is because they have some feed-in tariffs there,” he said. “This is a brand new market, so it’s growing very rapidly and not everyone is there yet.”

Kanjorski said the British certification process is different and more stringent than the certification required by other European Union countries.

“It did have a lot of extra requirements,” he said. “We had to do certain things, and going through the process was a good thing for the company as we mature.”

Overall, things are looking bright for the young Colorado-based solar company. It began producing small amounts of prototypes in 2009, Kanjorski said. In 2009, he said, “We were doing 100 panels a month. Now we’re doing 67,000 panels per month. That’s not running at full capacity.”

As the company works to expand production—it began commercial production in 2010 and can now produce about 65 megawatts a year—it’s also looking to sell its products in more international markets. For instance, Kanjorski mentioned India as another potential market for Abound’s products. At this point the company is planning additional production lines at its Longmont, Colo. facility and at a new facility in Tipton, Ind.

In all, Abound should be producing roughly 840 megawatts of photovoltaics annually by 2014, said spokesperson Nicole Bertram. The company plans to expand capacity at the Longmont facility to 250 MWs annually and the Tipton facility to 640 MWs annually. To help with the production expansion, she said, “We have $400 million from the Department of Energy.”

As their production reaches full capacity and module efficiency improves, Kanjorski said, Abound projects that its module costs will fall to between 50 cents per watt and 60 cents per watt. However, he said, “It requires a lot of effort, innovation and scale. We’re not there now. We have to do a lot.”

Image courtesy of Abound Solar.