Any hopes of growing a U.S. manufacturing base for thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) technology will have to spread out over a longer time horizon because the ranks of manufacturers just got thinner. Over the past few weeks one major production facility under construction was delayed and another thin-film manufacturer closed up shop.
GE decided to delay construction on its thin-film solar production facility in Aurora, Colo., a move that made headlines after it was first reported July 3 on the website GigaOM. The site reported that GE doesn’t expect to begin production there until 2013, and in the meantime will concentrate on research to further advance the technology.
The facility was subject of a major announcement in Oct. 2011, when GE said it would invest $600 million to build the largest solar panel production facility in the United States at a building near its solar “center of excellence” in Arvada, Colo., an operation that came with its acquisition of PrimeStar Solar in April 2011. The plant was designed to produce thin-film cadmium-telluride (CdTe) panels capable of generating 400 MW per year in a 400,000 square foot plant.
A few days before that news broke, Abound Solar, a few miles up the Front Range of the Rockies in Loveland, Colo., announced that it would cease operations. The company said in a release June 28 it intends to file a petition for protection under U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The suspension of operations affects approximately 125 employees.
Earlier this year, Abound ceased production of its first-generation PV module and had been working to scale up manufacturing for a second-generation product with higher efficiency. Abound said it has been “in discussions with potential buyers over the last several months, but ended negotiations when the involved parties were unable to come to an agreement on terms.”
Abound had used $70 million of a $400 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy for construction of solar panel manufacturing lines in Colorado. The company had also been funded by $300 million in private investments, the release said.
Both companies cited the drop in prices for conventional silicon-based PV panels as a source of their troubles. Abound Solar said, “Aggressive pricing actions from Chinese solar panel companies have made it very difficult for an early stage startup company like Abound to scale in current market conditions. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, the U.S. solar market has seen the prices for panels drop by more than 50 percent in the past year at a time when the value of imports of Chinese-made solar cells nearly quadrupled from $639 million in 2009 to $3.1 billion in 2011. Abound supports recent initiatives to enforce fair trade with import tariffs, but this action is unfortunately too late for the company.”
First Solar, Tempe, Ariz., the leader in production of thin-film photovoltaic systems, has seen its own share of trouble from the falling prices for conventional silicon PV panels. The company in April announced layoffs of 2,000 employees — almost a third of its workforce — and the closure of a manufacturing facility in Frankfurt, Germany, and the indefinite idling of four production lines in Malaysia in a move to align production with “sustainable market opportunities.”