Posted on 01/13/2011 3:04:51 PM PST by 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. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Congrats to a Democrat-controlled state legislature and boards, agencies and commissions, elected and otherwise
How many “Federal Grants/Giveaways” does it take to support this business???
Rush mentioned this morning that a solar array manufacturing plant closed down.
Hmmmm, no private money seems to think this is a good idea.
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.”
More taxpayer $$ down the crapper.
Pray for America
-PJ
‘Don’t worry California, we don’t need all those nasty computer companies anyway - we’re gonna lead the nation in greeen jobs.’
The Carolinas is the place you ought to be....so they loaded up the truck and moved to Raleigh!
Its looking like the amount of green jobs created in THIS state will be about
the same as deaths caused by diesel exhaust
ZERO
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/
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
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.