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In yet another sign of the American Midwest becoming a solar production hub, GlobalWatt has chosen to build its first photovoltaic panel factory in Saginaw, MI. The company has been lured by an attractive package of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of employment and business tax benefits offered by state and local agencies.

Local media first reported the story Tuesday (Dec. 15), following a press conference featuring Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and company CEO Sanjeev Chitre. The plan is for some $177 million to be spent on the facility over the next three to five years, which should result in the creation of at least 500 new jobs. The manufacturing site, suggested by local authorities and chosen by GlobalWatt, used to house Enterprise Automotive Systems.

I reached Rohit Arora, GlobalWatt’s VP of corporate development, via phone at the company’s San Jose offices. He said the firm will make a formal announcement soon, but still shared additional details about the company’s manufacturing and general business plans.

Arora said the new line would be designed with a 100MW production capacity. “Our business plan calls for a total capacity over the next three to five years of 500MW in module manufacturing. Phase one is 100MW total capacity, and the balance of the 400 will come after we have successfully executed the first 100MW in the Saginaw facility.”

The former automotive factory is a “large building, about 74,000 sq ft,” he said, and is “quite well prepped” with electrical hookups, lighting, air compressors and the like already in place. Most of the production tool buying decisions have been made, with the last few deals “still to be determined, which we hope to close in the next two to three weeks.”

GlobalWatt will start building out the semiautomated, crystalline-silicon module production line in the first quarter of next year, he explained, although some final scheduling details are still being finalized. The first modules should come out of the new factory in “third or fourth quarter of next year,” depending on timelines for certification and other things.

The company is working with Dow Corning and its equipment partner, Reis Robotics, on the moduling processes and technology, according to Arora. The close geographic proximity of Dow Corning, Hemlock, and other solar manufacturing infrastructure elements played a key role in GlobalWatt‘s decision to locate the plant in Saginaw.

“One of the things we looked at is the existence of essentially the entire food chain, the entire supply chain, in our backyard,” he explained. “We’re in the process of creating partnerships with Dow Corning for their encapsulation material, with a number of glass companies up there—we’ll probably have some kind of partnership on the glass side shortly. Suniva has announced a 400MW cell manufacturing facility [to be built in the area], so we’ll possibly be procuring Suniva cells for that Dow Corning process.”

(Note: The GlobalWatt VP may be jumping the gun a bit on the Suniva plant, since the Georgia-based solar cell company is still waiting to hear if it’s been approved for a U.S. federal loan guarantee, which will provide a good chunk of the monies needed to go forward with the Michigan manufacturing facility.)

Arora also cited the benefits of the “distributed manufacturing” model (being close to end markets, taking advantage of government incentives). He noted that “we’re working with partners overseas, so that could take on a couple of different forms. We could potentially look at shipping unfinished modules, unfinished laminates, to our other locations for final assembly, to add the framing, adding junction boxes, and packing operations.” 

“GlobalWatt is created to be somewhat of a vertically integrated company,” he continued. “On the module manufacturing side, we’ll be doing the bulk of our manufacturing in Michigan and in some other locations. We’re also developing a fairly robust system design and installation business, so to that extent, there might be a couple of different versions of how the business might pan out. We’re keeping our options open and are hoping to get everything wrapped up by the end of the year.”

Another area where the company is keeping its options open is in its PV technology choice.

“Right now, we’re focused on crystalline,” the VP said, “although we’re working with an equipment partner of ours who’s developed some interesting technology for amorphous silicon. It’s essentially ‘capex lite’ as opposed to the existing solutions out there, so that form of their technology is under development at the moment, they’re working out some of the bugs, and once that’s in place that’s something we’ll look at as well.”

For now though, the GlobalWatt team has plenty on its collective plate. “There’s a bit of a cycle to getting the plant up and certified, so while the factory is being built out, we will be pursuing a distribution market for GlobalWatt and private-labeled modules that are being manufactured by a partner firm, as well as on the systems side.”

Noting that the “if we build it, they will come” model “doesn’t work anymore” (although there might be some Chinese solar producers who would dispute that), Arora said that “it makes sense that while the factory is being built out, we firm up demand for our panels.”