photos: Schott
German solar company Schott on Monday cut the ribbon on a $100 million factory in Albuquerque, N.M., that will produce solar panels as well as receivers for solar trough power plants. Meanwhile, Chinese solar giant Suntech said Monday that it will build a solar cell manufacturing plant in the United States.
The move to North America comes as the European market softens as government subsidies ebb and solar panel prices fall. Despite the severe U.S. recession, Schott and Suntech are betting that the solar market will boom when the economy recovers and they’ll gain a competitive edge by manufacturing near customers.
“We think North America in general is the next big market for solar power,” Gerald Fine, CEO of Schott Solar’s North American operations, told Green Wombat. “Especially in the case of concentrated solar receivers you want to be close to your customers and provide great customer service and low shipping costs.”
And it doesn’t hurt to be generating green jobs as well. The 200,000-square-foot New Mexico factory employs 350 people. The plant was built too late to take advantage of the Obama stimulus package’s 30% tax credit for renewable energy manufacturing. But Fine said the tax credit will encourage Schott’s plans to eventually expand the facility to 800,000 square feet with a workforce of 1,500.
The receivers the factory makes are long glass-covered steel tubes that sit above parabolic troughs in large solar farms. The troughs concentrate sunlight on the receivers to heat a synthetic oil inside that is used to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.
Fine declined to discuss specific customers for the receivers but there are numerous solar trough power plants being planned for the Southwest, including Abengoa Solar’s Solana project in Arizona and utility FPL’s (FPL) Beacon 250-megawatt solar in California.
“We feel pretty comfortable with our order books in both product lines for the foreseeable future,” said Fine. “If you look at the publicly announced plans and try to put a reasonable probability of them being completed, there’s in excess of two gigawatts of power plants out there.”
Schott will have the North American receiver market to itself but will face some stiff competition when it comes to making photovoltaic modules. Thin-film solar cell maker First Solar (FSLR) is headquartered in neighboring Arizona and claims the lowest cost of manufacturing. Last year, German solar cell maker SolarWorld opened a factory outside Portland, Ore., while Silicon Valley’s SunPower (SPWRA) makes some of the most efficient solar cells — albeit overseas.
And now China’s Suntech (STP) is moving into the U.S. manufacturing market. The company on Monday said it is looking at several states as potential sites for a factory and will make a decision on where to locate the facility within six months
“We believe in the outstanding long-term prospects of the solar energy market in the United States, and we will continue to invest in our ability to meet a substantial portion of that potential growth through in-market manufacturing,” Suntech CEO Zhengrong Shi said in a statement.
Green Wombat 
FIRST SOLAR IS THE MOST OVERPRICED GARBAGE JUST MORE BS WALLSTREET HYPE
Solar is not Garbage, I have 5.4K system and it powers 100% of my home. It will take almost 5years for me to get my money back without selling the Green energy credits, and with selling them, it will take about 3. Solar is worth the expense. After it’s paid for it will continue to produce and I will be getting my energy 100% free. Learn about it before you post comments you know nothing about.
I got a quote to get solar panels to completely power my home. My electric bill runs $180 per month year around (budget billing). To go completely solar it would cost $96,000. That makes absolutely no sense. Even with the 30% refund for going solar. It’d take almost 30 years to realize a ROI.
Sorry, buth there are no such things as “green” jobs. They are just trading one type of job for another. Solar power, while clean, is a very inefficient and expensive way to generate energy. I wouldn’t get overly excited about this news article.
These solar cells have an operating life of almost 50 years. It will take almost 40 years to recover the cost of actually making the item for it to pay any kind of dividend. On top of that the materials used in making the cells have the potential to be worse for the environment than the coal power its supposed to replace. How is this efficient?
What about RSI Silicon in Easton PA they a unique process for producing solar grade silicon
This is great news ! But i would like to see more U.S. companys do this !
An opinion or do you actually have some solid information?
buy another product then
Work for the oil industry do you Ian? Solar may be overpriced, but at least it doesn’t poison the air we breathe like fossil fuels. America needs to stop thinking with their pocketbooks and start considering longterm implications of how we live. solar, geothermal, and hydro have zero toxic emissions…get with the program dude.
Great to see solar ramping up, but it can only do so much. We need homes that consume less energy in the first place. In the southeast SeacoastCottageCompany.com has it right.
We need to use solar energy to transport highway traffic, which is possible using existing technology, while reducing traffic and accidents – check out SolaTrek.
CSIQ is a good buy,now.
Not sure what Ian is talking about…this lines up with much of the news I’ve been reading lately re: solar & wind power. I suppose one benefit of the US economy being so low is that other countries are beginning to outsource manufacturing here.
that is a ridiculous statement with no basis.
And man will never fly, right Ian?
Amen to the FSLR comment. Time to watch them tumble
Stop saying nonsens please. it’s current trading at a P/E of 27 while its long term prospects are far superior to its peers. Saying it an overpriced garbage is just not right…
solar is the most cost effective source of non-combustion energy. However, I hope all of the money we are spending on these renewable energies does not create a green energy bubble.
Solar is garbage if you flunked high school math…. First Solar can make panels at $1 per watt. In 2006 it was $9 a watt and you woud break even within 1-20 years depending on incentives and house value increase etc. Now with even bigger incentives and a much lower cost… do the math/research before you shoot your loud mouth off…
FIrst Solar uses cadmium telluride for it’s panels, and while this is a very good material electrically, there simply is not enough tellurium available for these panels to make much of a difference.
“Maple” or “Mathematica” are highly complementary to any job. You
can annimate quickly by following the quide which indicates shapes
are functions, and more about functions.
What’s wrong with how this system is set up, the problems are
many and difficult to understand, but basically if you fixed the
engineering involved with the system, that would put every problem
on it’s best graph.
When considering fixing the employment, if you were to take the view
of doing what engineering wants in terms of education, government,
and business then you are answering the only question we answer
“what to expect”.
An engineer answers what to expect optimally:
“The graph of the function indicates all expectations”.
While I don’t want to get into name–calling and the like, I simply don’t understand those who attack alternative energy sources so heatedly. Yes, some are probably involved with the fossil fuel industries, but I’ve read literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of such comments, and surely the aren’t *all* so affliatted.
While solar is still relatively expensive, the price has dropped big time over the last few years, and promises to continue down. I doubt it’ll be very long before prices reach the point that they’ll be competitive — without subsidies.
We’ve seen solar for many, many years, in a halfway sort of sense: windows. Why do we have shades and curtains for our windows, particularly on the southern and western sides (in the northern hemisphere)? Because the sun beating through the glass makes it hotter inside. Why do we like aircon in our vehicles? Same reason. And so on.
Some of my friends who aren’t associated with the oil industry (others are) object that we can drill in Alaska and off the Gulf Coast, and perhaps elsewhere, and up coal mining. Those don’t make sense to me. Never mind global warming. I just would like to actually be able to see the sky on a day the weather folks report as “clear” — only to step outside here in central Bangkok and on really bad days, have trouble spotting the sun right off. And it stinks — and that’s from a long-time (and current) heavy smoker!
Sigh . . .