In The New York Times on Friday, I write about how Suntech has become the first Chinese solar company to win a major U.S. power plant contract:
Suntech, the Chinese solar giant, has won a contract to supply photovoltaic panels for a 150-megawatt project in Arizona, marking China’s entry into a lucrative United States power-plant market dominated by American companies.
The project is the first phase of a planned 700-megawatt project called Mesquite Solar to be built about 40 miles west of Phoenix and operated by Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy. A California utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, will purchase the electricity produced by the power plant’s first phase, called Mesquite Solar 1.
As photovoltaic panel prices have plummeted in recent years, utilities have increasingly turned to developers to build massive megawatt projects. American companies like First Solar of Tempe, Ariz., and Silicon Valley’s SunPower have captured the bulk of those contracts.
For instance, last month Southern California Edison signed contracts with SunPower to buy 711 megawatts of electricity from three large photovoltaic projects.
While Chinese companies like Suntech, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar have grabbed a significant percentage of the American residential solar market — supplying nearly 40 percent of panels in California — they had shied away from huge utility-scale projects.
Suntech has supplied solar panels for much smaller utility projects but expects large power plants like Mesquite Solar to account for a growing share of its United States revenues, according to Andrew Beebe, the company’s chief commercial officer.
“We think it is significant for us to win a project this large but I don’t know if it’s a China-U.S thing,” Mr. Beebe said in an interview. “We are a global company and we sell all over the world though the vast majority of our product is manufactured in China.”
Last year, Suntech opened its first American factory in Goodyear, Ariz., about 30 miles from the Mesquite site. Mr. Beebe said the factory, which is expected to have a capacity of 50 megawatts by the end of 2011, will supply less than 10 percent of the solar panels for Mesquite Solar 1.
You can read the rest of the story here
Green Wombat 
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