In another sign that the financial crisis is not slowing the solar industry, Suntech, the giant Chinese solar module maker, made a big move into the United States market on Thursday. The company announced a joint venure with green energy financier MMA Renewable Ventures to build solar power plants and said it would acquire California-based solar installer EI Solutions.
Founded in 2001, Suntech (STP) recently overtook its Japanese and German rivals to become the world’s largest solar cell producer. The company has focused on the lucrative European market and only opened a U.S. outpost, in San Francisco, last year. The joint venture with MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) – called Gemini Solar – will build photovoltaic power plants bigger than 10 megawatts.
Most solar panels are produced for commercial and residential rooftops, but in recent months utilities have been signing deals for massive megawatt photovoltaic power plants. Silicon Valley’s SunPower (SPWRA) is building a 250-megawatt PV power station for PG&E (PCG) while Bay Area startup OptiSolar inked a contract with the San Francisco-based utility for a 550-megawatt thin-film solar power plant. First Solar (FSLR), a Tempe, Ariz.-based thin-film company, has contracts with Southern California Edision (EIX) and Sempre to build smaller-scale solar power plants.
Suntech’s purchase of EI Solutions gives it entree into the growing market for commercial rooftop solar systems. EI has installed large solar arrays for Google, Disney, Sony and other corporations.
“Suntech views the long-term prospects for the U.S. solar market as excellent and growing,” said Suntech CEO Zhengrong Shi in a statement.
Other overseas investors seem to share that sentiment, credit crunch or not. On Wednesday, Canadian, Australian and British investors lead a $60.6 million round of funding for Silicon Valley solar power plant builder Ausra. “So far the equity market for renewable energy has not been affected by the financial crisis,” Ausra CEO Bob Fishman told Green Wombat.
The solar industry got more good news Wednesday night when the U.S. Senate passed a bailout bill that included extensions of crucial renewable energy investment and production tax credits that were set to expire at the end of the year.
Green Wombat 
If GW had created incentives when he should have we would have a home grown solar industry.
Does anyone find it curious that portions of the market that represent high confidence opportunities are unaffected by the wall street chaos? We are in a crisis of confidence and nothing less than intense prosecution of those on wall street and in our government who created this mess will restore confidence.
We need to keep the business and tax breaks to American companies.
I agree. The country that invented internet is now lagging behind in the new industrial revolution.
Criticism of green energy “subsidies” is off the mark. All capital intensive new energy generation (e.g. nuclear) have been heavily financed by governments, in a way or in another. Today, a well conceived and above all stable combination of tax breaks and feed-in tariff would be the healtiest economic stimulus: a reward for innovative manufacturing and sound investment (as opposed to risky housing mortgages and consumers gadgets). An aggressive energy policy is the new New Deal
Criticism of green energy subsidies is WAY off the mark. It ignores the fact that status quo energy is also heavily subsidized.
One of the fallacies in free market theory is the unfounded assumption that free markets promote innovation. This is a wishful misconception. The reality is that markets are an aggregation of investments, and that investors are conservative and risk-averse. Neither of these investor characteristics supports innovation, which is inherently risky.
If you want to achieve leadership in any form of innovation, you have to look beyond the market system for the source of that innovation. For really large initiatives, this generally means government involvement.
Markets are very good at efficiently exploiting innovation, but they’re not good at producing it.
The chinese are showing the way into the future, there is no alternative to solar energy to maintain our standard of living. What is left of oil should be used to build up the next energy generation, not burn it in SUVs.
Solar panels power plants are a green failure from the start!! It cost more energy to produce such photovoltaic cells and more pollutions than it will make and save during its lifetime (about 7 to 10 years before efficiency drops too low). Therefore solar energy technology must either migrate toward space or nanotechnology before becoming really green and efficient source of energy. As for durability, yes the sun is there for a long time, but the photovoltaic panels are a complete waste!
To Sentry: To make such a claim, next time please add where you have your sources. Just adds so much more credibility. We are always open for additional information, but don’t skimp on the sources.
don’t worry guy, the law of energy is neither create or destroy, it come around; if we have to there is always man power.
as a german citizen i would like to point out that your country should jump on the train of renewable energy as quickly as possible. you have so many innovative solar companies which urgently need government support on the federal level. The best market incentives are fixed feed-in tariffs. look at my country what the renewable sector is doing. The German PV Sector alone is accounting for more than 45.000 jobs, that is almost the same amount of jobs as in the nuclear industry.
Mr Sentry in Canada is right that solar power panel plants are failures – in Canada, where there is far less light than there is in a state like Texas.
Besides, it’s a great hobby for people who don’t waste their money on high-power speedboats, fancy cars, gambling, cigarettes, booze, recreational drugs, politics, nut-job religions, football, or movies.
Yep, I’m a electronics nut.