[The Vector] Clean Energy News from Around the Country: GE Goes Solar
On April 7th, General Electric (GE) announced it was purchasing PrimeStar Solar Inc., a thin-film solar panel manufacturer based in Colorado. GE also announced that it would build the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.
The thin-film products developed by PrimeStar Solar are apparently among the most efficient of all cadmium telluride (“cad tel”) on the market. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) verified the record-breaking efficiency, finding a 12.8% aperture area efficiency. GE said it will be focusing on improving the efficiency even more.
“Our wind business was just a couple of hundred million dollars in 2002. Now it’s a $6 billion platform. GE knows how to scale,” said Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy division. “We are addressing the biggest barrier for the mainstream adoption of solar technology – cost – and the NREL certification proves that we are on track to deliver the most affordable solutions for our customers.”
GE invested in PrimeStar Solar back in 2007, when the little company was a cadmium telluride start-up. It became a majority stockholder in 2008. The purchase in 2011 was some time coming, though the plans were not publicly known. GE researchers will work with PrimeStar to manufacture (and continue to develop) the “cad tel” solar panels, and GE will sell them for utility-scale solar farms.
The solar manufacturing facility (location yet to be announced) is expected to employ about 400 workers, create 600 jobs and manufacture 400 MW worth of solar panels per year. That is equal to powering about 80,000 homes per year. GE has already secured 100 MW of commercial deals for the thin-film products, including a 60 MW agreement from NextEra Energy.
“For the past five years, we’ve been investing extremely heavily in solar,” said Abate in the New York Times on April 7th, 2011. “We believe we we’ll be a cost leader, a technology leader and we’re excited about our position in a 75 GW solar market over the next five years.”
The current dominant manufacturer and leader in the thin-film market, U.S. based First Solar, must be worried. However, GE will face competition from the low-cost government-subsidized Chinese manufacturers. This will surely include a battle with the largest Chinese firm producing “cad tel” panels, Suntech Power Holdings.
