San Jose-based SoloPower announces expansion to Oregon

Mercury News ^ | 1/13/11 | Dana Hull

[NormsRevenge]

San Jose-based SoloPower announced Thursday that it is expanding -- to Oregon.

The company, which makes thin-film solar cells and modules, has chosen Wilsonville, south of Portland, as the site for its new manufacturing plant. The start-up got a $20 million loan through Oregon's State Energy Loan Program, which also was announced Thursday.

"The intention was always to have corporate here in Silicon Valley, and research and development here," said Peter Kesser, SoloPower's senior vice president for sales and marketing, in an interview. "But when we looked at scaling up, we looked at a number of areas, both here in the United States and abroad, and Oregon had a very compelling story."

SoloPower has 127 employees in San Jose. The new factory, which should be up and running late this year, will initially create 170 jobs in Oregon, and that number could grow to 500, the company says.

Kesser declined to say if California was considered as a site for expansion. ..

[NormsRevenge]

Congrats to a Democrat-controlled state legislature and boards, agencies and commissions, elected and otherwise

[radioone]

How many “Federal Grants/Giveaways” does it take to support this business???

[ReverendJames]

Rush mentioned this morning that a solar array manufacturing plant closed down.

[glorgau]

Hmmmm, no private money seems to think this is a good idea.

[twistedwrench]

2 other companies in this article
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/california-solar-firms-lured-other-states-7893

“This week, two Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturers announced they would build factories in southern states that offered business-friendly conditions and strong clean energy markets.”

[bray]

More taxpayer $$ down the crapper.

Pray for America

[Political Junkie Too]

Maybe they saw what happened to Solyndra up the road in Fremont.

-PJ

[skeeter]

‘Don’t worry California, we don’t need all those nasty computer companies anyway - we’re gonna lead the nation in greeen jobs.’

[Tea Party Reveler]

The Carolinas is the place you ought to be....so they loaded up the truck and moved to Raleigh!

[twistedwrench]

It’s looking like the amount of green jobs created in THIS state will be about
the same as deaths caused by diesel exhaust……… ZERO

[USNBandit]

a plethora, but this was a state giveaway. Oregon is trying to bankrupt itself paying money to "green" energy producers. I don't know if this is the same fund, but there is one pot of money up there which grants money for every site opened. You get more money if you split your windmills up to different locations. You also don't have to produce power to get paid.

It is an example of what happens when tree huggers whose only legal experience is trying to get logging injunctions start writing laws with huge loopholes in them. You would think the damage would be limited by some finite funding limit. Not in Oregon.

Here is a link from a lefty website blasting the BETC.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/02/the-problem-with-oregons-business-energy-tax-credit/

[Political Junkie Too]

Solyndra is a solar panel company. Obama visited there when he gave them $500 million in stimulus money in 2009.

What happened was, Solyndra created a new product, a cylindrical solar panel, instead of a flat one. This had the advantage of always having a direct facing to the sun. A CFO of another solar company once told me that the costs of silicon went down as PC demand went down, freeing up silicon for other use. This made the manufacturing costs of Solyndra cells more expensive than the competition, so the company canceled its IPO, canceled its expansion, and began laying off workers.

-PJ