General Electric’s plans to build a $300 million solar panel plant in Colorado comes as the solar industry has been rocked by a string of bankruptcies and falling prices.
On Friday, as GE executives outlined plans to build the country’s largest solar factory in Aurora, a congressional committee was holding hearings in Washington, D.C., on the bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra.
California-based Solyndra filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 6, shutting its plant and firing 1,100 workers.
The federal government was left to cover a $535 million loan guarantee and private investors lost an estimated $1 billion.
Solyndra was the third panel maker to file for bankruptcy in three months.
GE’s Colorado plans, however, should not be confused with the failures that have marked the sector, GE executives and industry analysts say.
The thin-film technology GE will use was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden and PrimeStar, an Arvada-based startup acquired by GE.
It uses a micro-layer of Cadmium telluride, or Cdte, on glass to create a solar cell.
Cdte solar panels have a nearly 20 percent share of the market and First Solar, the largest maker of Cdte panels, has remained competitive, said Shayle Kann, managing director for solar at GMT Research in Boston.
“GE is smart enough to look at First Solar and see if they are able to repeat First Solar’s success,” Kann said.
Solyndra also made a thin-film panel, but used a different process and materials.
Solar-panel makers are also facing declining prices as government-subsidized Chinese manufacturers dominated traditional solar-cell production, which uses processed and purified silicon wafers.
“What it boils down to is technology . . . and at the end of the day the way we measure costs,” said Victor Abate, who heads GE’s renewable-energy business.
The companies that have failed had “the wrong technology and the wrong cost structure,” Abate said.
Prices for silicon panels, which generate more electricity than thin-film cells, have dropped 30 percent this year, to about $1.35 a watt, and 70 percent during the past three years.
“While a lot of us are looking at it as a scary situation, it had to happen to make solar cells competitive,” said Abate at a news conference at the state Capitol on Friday with Gov. John Hickenlooper, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer.
GE is prepared to make an investment that will total $600 million by the time the Aurora plant — equal to the size of 11 football fields — is ready to sell panels in 2013, Abate said.
The plant will initially employ about 355 people in a highly automated, high-tech factory with a general wage range of $50,000 to $74,000, according to GE officials.
By 2014, GE will consider an expansion that could more than double the size of the plant to 700,000 square feet, company officials said.
One U.S. wind farm that is a GE customer recently decided to add solar panels, Abate said.
“If 20 percent of the wind farms do that, we are sold out for 10 years,” he said.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
