SolarWorld plant brightens Oregon

SolarWorld AG recently announced plans to develop North America’s largest solar plant in the growing town of Hillsboro.

The Bonn, Germany-based company, one of the world’s largest solar cell manufacturers, recently purchased a Hillsboro silicon wafer production facility from Japan’s Komatsu Group for the bargain price of $40 million. Adding to the nearly $500 million Komatsu had invested, SolarWorld says it intends to spend $400 million revamping the 400,000-square-foot plant, and it plans to eventually employ nearly 1,000 highly skilled workers. If the production facility achieves its goal of producing enough solar cells to generate 500 megawatts of electricity by the year 2009, it would become the largest solar factory in North America.

The Oregon Business Energy Tax Credit was inviting to the company; but the area’s highly skilled workers were almost equally attractive, says SolarWorld President Boris Klebensberger. Microchip titan Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) currently employs 16,000 people at its Hillsboro campus.

After buying Shell Solar in 2006, SolarWorld acquired a monocrystalline production facility in Vancouver, Wash., that currently employs 100 people. The company says it plans to shift its Vancouver operations, including most of the plant’s workers, to Hillsboro by the summer of 2007. While bumping up production at its new Hillsboro site, the group also plans to double the capacity of its solar module factory in Camarillo, Calif., to 100 megawatts.

The worldwide photovoltaic market grew 30 percent annually over the past five years, according to industry experts. The U.S. solar industry experienced record growth in 2006, due to rising fuel costs, federal incentives and the California Solar Initiative. Last year, SolarWorld sales grew 45 percent from 2005.

“A part of our company growth now is taking place at Hillsboro,” Klebensberger says. “The United States has been an important market to our branch, and we see an advantage of offering U.S.-made products in this market.”

SolarWorld operates production facilities in Germany and Sweden, and it was the first major solar company to successfully develop and adopt solar module recycling.