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Solar Power International 2009 short takes: “Made in North America” continues forward momentum
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It’s taken the organizers of the Solar Power International only two years to double-down on their bet. The 2007 show in Long Beach had about half as many exhibitors as the recently completed 2009 edition’s more than 900 represented companies, and thousands more attendees and other warm bodies swarmed the four contiguous halls at the Anaheim Convention Center. Although it would be tempting to say the highlight of the event was the Solar Block Party at Disneyland—hard to top enjoying the “Fantasmic!” multimedia extravaganza starring Mickey Mouse and friends, with a cold beer in hand among fellow adult revelers and not a child in sight (or earshot)—the real star of the show was the resilient and technologically savvy industry itself.
One prevailing theme at SPI09: the budding trend of companies announcing their intention to build and/or ramp North American manufacturing plants (or at least paying lip service to that effect).
J.M Lee, president/COO of Apos Energy (a unit of Taiwanese solar-cell maker Gintech), told me the company is considering building a PV panel line in the U.S. in 2010, probably in cooperation with a partner. The module plant, if built, would benefit from Gintech’s current move to convert its entire multi- and monocrystalline cell capacity—which will reach 720MW in 2010--to the higher-efficiency Douro process.
Canadian inverter start-up Sustainable Energy Technologies’ VP Brent Harris said his company, which now relies on Adeptron to contract-manufacture about 400 of its thin-film PV-oriented units per month, will eventually do its own production in Ontario and is looking for an old automobile plant to set up shop. Although the company has set no timetable for making the manufacturing move, it does want to take advantage of the province’s incentives package, he noted, which requires a substantial percentage of “Made in Canada” components.
Frank Cooper, president of Island Technology’s subsidiary Direct Grid Technologies, another rugged face in the microinverter space, told me his company is running three surface mount lines at its Edgewood, NY, factory and expects to ship out “10,000 pieces before Thanksgiving” (that’s late November for you non-Yanks in the readership). He estimates production of Direct Grid’s “Made in America” branded devices will hit the two million-plus mark over the next three years.
Suntech spokeswoman Sarahjane Sacchetti confirmed that the Chinese PV firm will announce its site selection choice for a ~50MW moduling plant in November, with the semifinalist locations narrowed to Arizona or Texas. She said the factory is being designed (that 50MW nameplate is a “moving target”) and although a “retrofit (of an existing facility) would be ideal,” it’s not a must.
Sanyo’s silicon ingot plant in Salem, OR, will officially open Nov. 2, according to the company’s Aaron Fowles. The 70MW factory started sending test lots to Japan earlier in October and should ramp to full production in 2010. The firm’s Monterrey, Mexico, module assembly line is also reopening the same week as the Salem plant’s kickoff with its new, improved 50MW line, he added.
Solon is “selling all we can build” from its Tucson, AZ, 100MW moduling production facility, according to the company’s biz-dev director, the peripatetic Neil Shea, noting a recent increase in demand. Two of the lines are fully populated, he told me, another stringer-less line is set for thin-film-type modules, and a fourth has no framer robot, since it is designated for manufacturing of Solon’s new utility-scale, tracker-ready frameless modules, the 375W, 96-cell beasts that should get UL approval for the U.S. market by March 2010 or so. If the company wanted to expand operations at the Tucson site, it could, explained U.S. division CEO Olaf Koester, since existing warehouse space could be “reallocated” and converted to an additional 100MW or more of moduling capacity.
Cadmium-telluride thin-film PV newcomer Abound Solar is closing in on its “steady-state” yield and conversion efficiency targets and will hit its 65MW production ramp goal by year’s end at its plant in Longmont, CO, said Mark Chen. The company’s director of marketing also told me the company’s first commercial shipment went out this week to a previously unannounced (and still unnamed) customer and that after getting UL certification a few weeks ago, Abound expects to get IEC approval from TUV before the end of the year.
Although reticent to be too “forward looking” in his comments, Xunlight’s Xunming Deng said that the Toledo, OH-based company’s 200-foot-long roll-to-roll amorphous-silicon TFPV production line is up and running, though not at full capacity yet. The president/CEO and former university professor would not narrow down whether the 25MW line would hit nameplate in the early or latter part of 2010, but did tell me Xunlight just signed a “very big order” that they haven’t officially announced yet, the company’s first real commercial score.
Deng also had just come back to Anaheim from a whirlwind trip—flying cross-country and back in a day or so—to attend a “big picture” strategy meeting with U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and other clean-tech industry executives in Washington, although he said the journey had nothing to do with Xunlight’s pending $120 million DOE loan-guarantee application submitted in February, which is now in the due-diligence phase.
PHOTO BY TOM CHEYNEY
Could somebody please clarify what made in North America means? Is that NAFTA? Can we continue to manufacture in Mexico and have utilities buy smart meters and solar PV panels from us with the comfort of knowing they are "made in America?" Thanks!