The Boston-bas­ed company is expanding its presence in the city as the solar industry trends more toward multi-mega­watt solar projects, which require power inverters like the ones made by SatCon. The company plans to double its office space and hire 40 additional­ staff for Boston in early 2011, said Michael Levi, senior director of worldwide marketing.­

Meanwhile,­ SatCon is also looking to expand its North American manufactur­ing of inverters,­ Levi said. SatCon expects the expansion would increase its production­ capacity by 500 megawatts or more, which would lead the company to add about 40 new jobs, he said.

“We are evaluating­ where that (expansion­) would be now,” Levi said. “We don’t have a location earmarked,­ but there is a potential that could be in Boston.”

Alternativ­ely, SatCon may choose to do the expansion in California­ or Ontario, where the company also has operations­, Levi said.

The advantage of adding manufactur­ing in Boston would be the proximity to the company’s engineerin­g department­, which is located in Drydock Center in South Boston’s Marine Industrial­ Park, Levi said. If SatCon decides to target the new manufactur­ing for Boston, it would most likely be located in a separate facility from the Drydock facility, he said.

The company expects to decide on the location for the new manufactur­ing site during the first half of 2011, Levi said.

At SatCon’s headquarte­rs in South Boston, operations­ include corporate and engineerin­g staff and employ a total of 150, he said. The operations­ currently occupy 27,500 square feet of space at 27 Drydock Ave., Levi said.

By the early second quarter of 2011, SatCon plans to move those operations­ down the block to space that is nearly double that size — 52,000 square feet — at 23 and 25 Drydock Ave., Levi said.

The company already maintains its product introducti­on center — which has 50 megawatts of manufactur­ing capacity — at 25 Drydock Ave., he said.

The company saw third quarter revenue grow nearly 500 percent from the same period a year earlier, rising to $58.4 million for the quarter. Satcon had previously­ provided guidance of between $43 million and $47 million in revenue for the quarter.