LG to Build New 500MW Solar Module Manufacturing Plant in Alabama (160 full-time jobs)

Greentech Media ^ | June 27, 2018 | Julia Pyper

[2ndDivisionVet]

LG Electronics is expanding its U.S. presence with a new solar module assembly plant in Huntsville, Alabama.

The South Korean technology giant will invest $28 million to set up the factory that's expected to create 160 new full-time jobs. LG will add two production lines at its 48-acre campus in Huntsville, where the company has had operations for four decades. The solar module plant will bring LG's total employment in the Southern city to more than 400 workers.

Starting in early 2019, the new manufacturing plant is expected to produce 500 megawatts of solar modules per year. LG joins a steadily growing list of solar companies to have announced plans to invest in American manufacturing since President Trump imposed tariffs on imported solar cells and modules earlier this year. The tariffs stemmed from a Section 201 trade case brought by struggling U.S.-based solar companies Suniva and SolarWorld Americas.

"This demonstrates our commitment to being a long-term leader in the U.S. solar industry," Soon Kwon, global president of the LG B2B (business-to-business) Company. "LG's investment in U.S. manufacturing is consistent with the administration's goal of creating U.S. jobs."

In recent months, JinkoSolar, First Solar and Hanwha Q Cells have unveiled plans to open new solar module facilities in the U.S. California-based SunPower Corp. announced it will acquire trade case petitioners SolarWorld Americas, in an attempt to avoid the impact of tariffs.

Suniva, which instigated the Section 201 case, was released from bankruptcy earlier this month by financial firm SQN Capital Management. SQN supported Suniva through the trade dispute and is now looking for partners to reboot operations.

LG, a top module provider in the U.S. residential solar market, said its expanded Huntsville factory will enable the company to better serve its U.S. customers. The solar facility will initially assemble LG's NeON 2 series 60-cell modules, which the company claims can generate 17 percent more power than most conventional 60-cell panels.

"U.S. manufacturing makes a lot of sense for LG after the imposition of Section 201 tariffs," said Jade Jones, senior solar analyst at GTM Research. "The company focuses on higher-efficiency modules, exclusively focused on n-type monocrystalline modules. As such, LG's modules demand a higher premium than the standard multi or p-type monocrystalline PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell) modules being shipped to the U.S., so the 201 tariff would impact LG pricing more."

But while this is a smart move for LG, companies have now reached the point where total domestic crystalline-silicon module capacity exceeds the 2.5-gigawatt cell quota under Trump administration's trade remedy, Jones added. The Section 201 decision allows for 2.5 gigawatts of foreign-made solar cells to be imported tariff-free each year, for the duration of the four-year tariff period.

"There is no room for more suppliers to add module capacity in the U.S. if they want to import non-tariffed cell capacity," Jones said.

Jones' calculation excludes SunPower's SolarWorld facility and Tesla's joint U.S. manufacturing plant with Panasonic, as both ventures have cell-to-module integrated capacity.

Once all of the recent new manufacturing announcements have ramped up production, more than half of U.S. crystalline-silicon module capacity will be foreign-owned, she said. That does not include Tesla's Buffalo solar facility, despite its connection to Japanese multinational Panasonic.

LG said Wednesday that it selected Huntsville for its new solar module production plant after conducting a competitive multistate search.

The company has a long history of working in Alabama. LG established its service division in Huntsville in 1987, after launching the company's first U.S. manufacturing subsidiary in 1981. Today, Huntsville continues to serve as LG's headquarters for North American service operations. The campus also includes the technical call center, service training center, field service operations and parts warehouse.

Local policymakers heaped praise on the tech giant for investing further in their region. Attractive state and local incentives were a key element of LG's decision.

"LG has a long history as a leading corporate citizen in Alabama," said Governor Kay Ivey, in a statement. "Now, LG is launching our state's first solar manufacturing plant, which represents a major milestone both for Alabama and for the company. We look forward to seeing where this great partnership takes us in the future."

The solar factory announcement coincides with several other major LG manufacturing initiatives in the U.S. The South Korean company is currently finishing construction of a new $250 million washing machine plant in Clarksville, Tennessee, which is expected to create 600 new jobs when production starts in the fourth quarter. The Trump administration announced tariffs on foreign-made washing machines in January.

Later this year, LG will open an advanced electric-vehicle components factory in Hazel Park, Michigan, as well as an expanded research and development center in Troy, Michigan. The two facilities will collectively create nearly 300 new jobs. Finally, LG is investing $300 million in its new North American headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The office park is expected to open in 2019.

[Jeff Chandler]

If that’s so then the panels would be too expensive to even consider buying.

Bingo.

[ConservaTeen]

Obama, youngest lied about manufacturing jobs not coming back, but that's ok, we knew you were full of __it, you Marxist jackass!

I hope I didn't offend you, Zerobama. If I did, I don't care, since you are offending my PRESIDENT!!

[GingisK]

Thank you. It is the term I had not encountered to this point in time. Electricity & Physics loom large in my background.

I'd refer to it as "instantaneous standby capacity", like the bypass capacitors on my circuit boards.

[Steely Tom]

I'd refer to it as "instantaneous standby capacity", like the bypass capacitors on my circuit boards.

Yes, in an abstract sense you're right, but of course bypass capacitors store picojoules or nanojoules of energy, whereas spinning reserve has to be able to supply hundreds of kW in one or two revolutions of the alternator shaft; also bypass caps are acting to (try to) hold a DC bus at a constant voltage, whereas utility spinning reserve is trying to hold an AC bus at a constant frequency.

There are disturbances on the order of microseconds (lightning strikes and squirrels shorting out phases) of course, but those are taken care of by other means.

On the power grid's "infinite bus," an alternator that falls behind due to RPM drop becomes a motor, sucking energy from the grid. Thus the problem becomes one of phase control, really. Each alternator is a synchronous device that must be phase locked to within a very small amount (like a fraction of an electrical degree) of the grid at large.

If there's a sudden load change, at least two things happen fast: one is that the exciter current of the alternator is bumped up to supply enough field to keep the alternator's output voltage high enough so that it is a net source to the grid. The other is that (as I said before) more energy is supplied to the prime mover to keep the drive shaft in phase with the other devices on the grid. That happens a little more slowly because the amount of mechanical energy stored in the spinning turbine-alternator rotor assembly is hundreds of millions of joules, and inertia will carry the device for a few revolutions.

I forgot to complete my thought before. The problem with wind power is that — well — it varies with the breeze. Since the utility's customer's demands do not vary with the breeze, the utility has to supply spinning reserves to back up any wind turbines that are on the grid; the amount (I was told) they plan for is 75%, meaning each kW of wind turbine has to have 0.75 kW of spinning reserve somewhere, ready to take over if the wind dies off.

This of course costs the utility money, and that amount of money subtracts from the economic efficiency of wind turbines. The same is true of photovoltaics; if a cloud obscures the sun, and your PV installation suddenly drops from supplying 50 MW to 5MW, that's like someone just fired off an electric arc furnace on your grid with zero warning.

[SunkenCiv]

> Thanks for the info on photo voltaic, I was about to plop down a lot to install solar panels on my home in S Florida.

In Florida they might pay off, since you use electricity for cooling; the point I was trying to make (and I didn’t do too well) is that the cheaper the cells, generally speaking, the better. The price of the tech will decline further, and efficiency of the cells has risen.

> Use will promote efficiency, right along with battery technology.

Efficiency of the cells won’t improve much — the area of improvement will be the cost of manufacture. When (if) a breakthrough is made in ambient temperature superconductors, replacement of the trunk lines with the new material(s?) will in effect approximately triple electrical production in the US without building a single generating plant. Changing from direct use of fuels to buried heat exchangers (a heat pump system; some neighbors have used that for over 30 years, the price of those has risen, alas) would be an understandable consequence to the net reduction of generating costs.

[prophetic]

btw there are no trees near my house though I have several tree in front and in the backyards. Plus the length of the house runs East to West and faces to the south.

[SunkenCiv]

The reason Elon Musk's company sells those battery storage subsystems is that our wonderful Sun, which has a lot of really positive qualities, doesn't stay in the sky 24/7. Without tracking, cells are at a fixed angle, and have a "sweet spot" centered (usually) around midday. The angle of the Sun also varies due to the time of year. OTOH, your situation sounds pretty close to ideal. The question is, always, whether your current monthly cost of electricity doesn't exceed the amortized cost of your solar installation -- and of course, your monthly cost of electricity will rise slightly over time. Electricity happens to be a gi-normous bargain, even with the various criminal enterprises enacted by the Demwits in order to enrich Al Gore et al.

[prophetic]

Yeah, well under ideal conditions the electric bill is near about $150/month. And I almost forgot to mention that I was also planning to add a Power Wall UPS bank (13kWh) for starters though this is the most expensive add-on at $6,600 for the hardware alone.

[PapaBear3625]

On the power grid's "infinite bus," an alternator that falls behind due to RPM drop becomes a motor, sucking energy from the grid. Thus the problem becomes one of phase control, really. Each alternator is a synchronous device that must be phase locked to within a very small amount (like a fraction of an electrical degree) of the grid at large.

We're starting to see a shift to high voltage DC (HVDC), with that being a big factor in favor of the switch

[Steely Tom]

Thanks for the link. Very interesting.

[SunkenCiv]

Wow, that's a nice big electric bill. I finally couldn't sleep last night, shut the windows, and kicked on the air. It was still dark of course, but the whole-house system ran until I fell asleep and was running when I got up for the first pee break. It was pushing 100°F all day, and with the strong wind, I felt like an entree in a convection oven. ;^) I turned the thermo up to 80, and it has since cooled down outdoors. With the windows and doors closed, I don't think it will run much, and plan to shut it off tomorrow.