Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

• Most Popular Articles

  • Q-Cells CEO exits amid investor anxiety
  • Moser Baer achieves 7.3% module efficiency through its proprietary process
  • Solar photovoltaic market grew 6% in 2009, says Solarbuzz
  • Yingli Green to add 300MW of capacity; tops $1B in annual revenues, achieves record module shipments
  • Project Focus: SunPower scores 200MW rooftop PV contract with Southern California Edison

• Popular Technical Papers

  • Photovoltaic Fab Managers’ Forum Review
  • Photovoltaic industry 2009: a journey into uncertainty
  • Overview of automation in the photovoltaic industry
  • Thin-film CIGS starts to come of age
  • CIGS, CdTe thin-film PV equipment sector emerges, standardization remains elusive

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter

  Name
  Job title
  Company
  Email

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators may be cellar dwellers in the National Hockey League, but Ontario has its eye on the clean-energy puck and is gaining momentum as a leading destination for solar project development and manufacturing.

The provincial government’s passage of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act in May, which includes a potentially lucrative feed-in tariff and special incentives for homegrown system components, has triggered a veritable gold rush across much of the photovoltaic—and other alternative energy—value chain as companies scramble to take advantage of what’s being called “North America's first comprehensive guaranteed pricing structure for renewable electricity production.” 

Over the past several weeks, announcements have poured out of the province, from Enbridge and First Solar’s plans to quadruple the size of the Sarnia solar farm from 20MW to 80MW and SunEdison and Skypower’s recent activation of the 9.1MW First Light installation (and SunEd’s move to double its Canadian workforce) on the project and integration side, to news from Canadian Solar, Opsun, and ATS Automation/Photowatt Ontario that they plan to build module production capacity in the area. 

ATS, which owns integrated solar PV manufacturer Photowatt France, has hung out a new shingle at its Cambridge, ON, complex—Photowatt Ontario—and plans to be a full-service provider to installers and developers as well as make modules. Its own project development team is in place and orders are in the pipeline. In addition to its captive PV assets, the firm also supplies a number of solar players with turnkey automation platforms and equipment, and is no slouch when it comes to automated materials handling, final assembly, and the quality control and testing of modules.

I contacted Carl Galloway, the company’s VP/treasurer, who shed a little more light on ATS’ solar plans. He told me during a phone interview that the company, “a well-established manufacturer in the province,” has “designated a portion of our buildings as a ‘green wing’; that’s where the modules capabilities we’re developing would be housed, that’s where Photowatt Ontario is housed.”

He would not divulge any megawatt production capacity numbers, explaining that “we’re pretty flexible in our ramp, and we can ramp to, we believe, significant volume. We want to meet market demand, and we will be gauging market demand. But we’re not actually quantifying our intentions as this point.”

The new moduling line is being set up in existing facilities, and ATS’ “automation team is participating in the construction of the line,” which he cagily said “was in process.” The ramp will continue through the first half of 2010, with modules starting to come off the line by midyear. As for additional capacity down the road, Galloway suggested there was the “potential for multiple lines” in the future.

“We also have developed a contract manufacturing arrangement that would assist with meeting demand as required,” although he would not identify the contract manufacturer. He did say that company is “developing module manufacturing in the province,” implying the partner is in its own ramp phase as well.

Photowatt France will supply the crystalline-silicon cells for its sister company’s modules (although the ATS VP left that door open—“we could use other cells”). The French will also provide their expertise in PV manufacturing and project development.

The new unit will also bring in some of its seasoned manufacturing folks in Ontario, “not necessarily solar module manufacturing, but they are experienced manufacturing people—we are drawing from both places to develop the team. We’re marrying it up with Photowatt’s capabilities.”

ATS also has reached out to some “upstream producers,” inviting them to collocate and participate in what they hope will be a “center of solar energy innovation” in its green wing on the Cambridge campus.

“We are an equipment supplier to solar, not just module manufacturing,” Galloway explained. “For the services market, we feel there would be a number of people along the entire chain who might be interested in working with someone…in initiating production in Ontario. We can supply equipment to people who might want to build things.” That could include balance-of-system components such as inverters, he said.

“The feed-in tariff program opens up a lot of opportunities for us and others to develop a solar market in Ontario,” Galloway opined. “We want to support that and, in fact, we’d like to lead it. We think, with our two capabilities in solar and equipment—and the fact that we’re here—that we’re uniquely positioned to be one of the leaders.”

Sounds like Team ATS believes it has a man-advantage and could score during this Ontarian solar power play.