A venture between Toshiba Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. is more than doubling capacity to produce inverters, a key solar device, tracking growth in Asia and the U.S.

Production of the part, which allows solar power to be fed into grids, will begin at a factory in Texas in late July and at a plant in Yancheng, China, as early as October, said Hidehiko Kikuchi, head of the power electronics systems division at Toshiba Mitsubishi-Electric Industrial Systems Corp. TMEIC has been making inverters at three plants in Tokyo, Shanghai and India.

"We need to become a local player to become global," Kikuchi said in an interview. "Our idea is to build a factory where there is a big market."