RAMPING UP
Many of the processes are still being automated, and the plant is also testing and expanding new systems in mid-production.
“I’ve got this radio here in case things go south,” says Willie Owens, an equipment engineer in goggles and jeans. He was testing new furnaces and water-cooling equipment.
If there were a big problem, he explains, he would have to hit a button within one minute to activate emergency systems.
The job, he says with relish, provides “an adrenaline rush sometimes.”
Like a number of other SolarWorld employees at all levels, Owens is a transplant from the semiconductor industry, whose big West Coast factories have suffered badly in the latest downturn. Hynix, for example, closed a plant in Eugene, Oregon, last year, resulting in the loss of about 1,100 jobs.
Even as SolarWorld charges ahead, adding new equipment and breaking ground for its factory expansion, there are daily reminders of the challenges ahead. The company’s share price has declined more than 30 percent in two years, to 21.05 euros (US$27.80), largely because of slowing demand and a growing number of manufacturers.
Asia has also become a manufacturing hub for solar power, and many panels from China have entered the market, although the recession has forced some companies to cut back. Suntech Power, a leading Chinese manufacturer, is now using just 55 percent of its factories’ capacity, though it, too, is looking for factory space in the US for the long term.
Like the rest of the industry, SolarWorld is also trying to adjust to the decline in panel prices, which are likely to keep falling into the summer, given the oversupply and the continuing credit crisis.
Klebensberger tries to put a positive spin on this, noting that the first quarter is always relatively weak because Europeans avoid installing panels during the winter.
For all of last year, the company’s sales grew at a heady 31 percent. But the pace of growth in the fourth quarter slowed considerably.
Industry-wide installations in the first quarter in California, the largest market in the US, remain robust. Installers there are wary, however. They say demand dried up in the last six months because companies lack financing and homeowners are more worried about their mortgages than sinking US$25,000 or more into making electricity on their roof.
Analysts say the first-quarter figures in California may have had a boost from projects that were already in the pipeline and that future numbers may be less robust. A year ago, installers say, they were calling manufacturers to ask for panels; now the situation is reversed, with manufacturers making sales calls.
COMPETITION
In the meantime, the competition among manufacturers is likely to intensify. Even as some of the weaker solar companies resort to layoffs, a number of big names including Schott, First Solar, SunPower and Sharp are building, expanding or looking to build manufacturing plants in the US. Sanyo, the Japanese electronics company, is building a solar wafer factory in Salem — Oregon’s capital — that is to begin production this fall.
Klebensberger relishes the competition and the boost it could give the US economy.
Solar energy can provide jobs and energy security, he says, “so it’s a way out of the crisis.”
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