Amid the daily drumbeat of mass layoffs, here’s some sunny news: Solar startup Suniva cut the ribbon Thursday on a photovoltaic cell factory outside Atlanta.
As solar factories go, Suniva’s plant – the first such facility in the Southeast – is relatively small, making 32 megawatts of solar cells annually until production is fully ramped up to 175 megawatts in 2010. But the factory will create 100 green collar jobs and it follows the opening of SolarWorld’s new solar cell fab outside Portland, Ore., that will produce 500 megawatts’ worth of solar cells, and thin-film solar startup HelioVolt’s factory in Austin. Meanwhile, Solyndra, a Silicon Valley thin-film solar startup, is expanding its production facilities while Bay Area rival OptiSolar is building a Sacramento factory that will employ 1,000 workers to produce solar cells for the power plant the company is building for utility PG&E (PCG). (Leading thin-film solar company First Solar (FSLR) operates a factory in Ohio as well as plants in Malaysia.) But Chinese solar giant Suntech (STP) last week said it has put plans for U.S. factories on hold due to the credit crunch.
The Suniva grand opening comes on a good news-bad news day for the solar industry. On one hand, President-elect Barack Obama is expected to nominate alternative energy proponent and Nobel laureate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as Secretary of Energy. But the solar industry faces a tough year ahead. On Thursday, research firm New Energy Finance, echoing other analysts, predicted prices for polysilicon – the base material of conventional solar cells – would fall 30% in 2009. That’s bad news for conventional solar cell makers like SunPower (SPWRA) and Suntech if they’ve locked in silicon supplies at higher prices but provides an opening for further growth for thin-film solar companies that make solar cells that use little or no polysilicon.
“We expect to see significant drops in the price of modules next year,” wrote New Energy Finance CEO Michael Liebreich. “Any manufacturer who does not have access to cheap silicon and who has not focused on manufacturing costs is going to be in trouble. The big shake-out is about to begin. The next two years will change the economics of PV electricity out of recognition.”
Green Wombat 