Barry Broome, President of Greater Phoenix Economic Council: "We consider solar the most important industry in Arizona."

Edwin F. Feo, Managing Director, USRG Renewable Finance: "Just go to a coal conference if you really want to be depressed."

"Until we get to 2016, the best thing is that the ITC will go away and we'll trade in a nice commodity called cash."

"You’re not going to see the effect of 1603 not being renewed until sometime next year.”

Jesse Pichel of Jefferies: "Taking the German cost structure to the U.S. gets me really excited."

"None of the solar companies know how to sell."

John Lefebvre, President, Suntech America likened the maturing solar market to the commodity DRAM market with its "three- to five-year cycles of oversupply and undersupply. As we go through the business cycle, some of the business models will fail." (But, he noted, consumers are starting to notice that solar today is more affordable now than it was six months ago.)

Eran Mahrer, Vice President, Utility Strategy, Solar Electric Power Association, acknowledged that natural gas is currently cheaper than power from solar but noted that sophisticated energy producers "must balance their portfolio." In balancing risk, natural gas can't be the completely dominant source and "utilities are pricing in that volatility."

Constellation Energy’s Senior VP of Green Initiatives Michael D. Smith said: “If we fast-forward to this conference five years from now, half of the agenda is going to be storage.”

Abe Yokell of RockPort Capital: "There's only one Silicon Valley investment guy at this conference, and that's me. That's distressing."
 
Sheldon Kimber, Chief Operating Officer, Recurrent Energy worked in the natural gas business prior to his work at PV developer Recurrent. He is bearish and long on natural gas. He's also less than optimistic about solar's current situation, and the source of his negative attitude is the 50 gigawatts of available capacity in the solar industry with a market demanding only half of that. Kimber said, "This industry needs to come to grips with the fact that the industry has to be almost wholesale-competitive." Kimber also said, "The developer shakeout is going to come from capital and interconnection [pressures]."

Matt Cheney, CEO, CleanPath Ventures: “We’re in this awkward scramble, which means that stuff gets put in the warehouse and the title transfers and ultimately, at some point in time, it has to become associated with an actual project. Even if it does or it wasn’t structured adequately, there is recourse on the part of the [IRS] to essentially dismantle the deal."
 

And here's a collection of articles from Greentech Media and elsewhere reporting on the event:

–Tom Doyle of NRG Solar on reasons to be cheerful in solar

–Solar Balance of System update including Enphase-Tigo slap-fight   

–No-holds barred Solar tariff debate  

–Net energy metering debate with more civil participants  

Surviving as a Solar Manufacturer in Today's Market

Utilities' Honest Assessment of Solar in the electric mix

Motley Fool Solar Summit Day 1 — Notes and Quotes

Motley Fool Solar Summit Day 2 — Notes and Quotes

US Solar Developers Face Bottleneck (from Environmental Finance and behind a paywall) 

Thanks to the attendees, speakers, and our online audience.
 

Go Green

Cleantech Group just gave a sneak peak at the VC investment totals for the first few months of 2012 and — hot off the presses — the total is $ 1.5 billion in 110 deals. That's for just the first two months, and the activity in VC picks up in the final month of the quarter, according to Sheeraz Haji, the CEO at Cleantech Group, who said, "I think it will be a good quarter." Haji is also on record as saying that "2011 will be a strong year for cleantech IPOs," which was not the case, but he may have only been off by one year. 2012 is seeing IPO movement from Enphase, BrightSource, Enerkem, and Luca Technologies. Haji added, "This week could mark an inflection point" in the environment for cleantech IPOs.

Here's a view of past VC totals in the sector, according to The Cleantech Group:

• 2006:   $ 4.64 billion
• 2007:   $ 6.58 billion
• 2008:   $ 9.68 billion
• 2009:   $ 6.24 billion
• 2010:   $ 8.04 billion
• 2011:   $ 9.03 billion

Energy Efficiency led 2011 in investment sectors by total number of deals.

Go Green

These tariffs should not have a significant impact on the price of solar panels, although SolarWorld can contest the figures between now and the final determination. The other shoe to drop will be the dumping finding and any potential tariffs related to that finding, the announcement of which is scheduled for May. Any additional tariffs will be added to the unfair subsidies tariff.

Here are some reactions and statements from concerned parties in the industry:

President Barack Obama, from a speech on Wednesday at the Copper Mountain Solar Project in Boulder City, Nevada

"We’re also enforcing our trade laws to make sure countries like China aren’t giving their solar companies an unfair advantage over ours. And that’s important because countries all around the world — China, Germany, you name it — they understand the potential. They understand the fact that as countries all around the world become more interested in power generation — their population is expanding, their income level is going up, they use more electricity — and we’re going to have to make sure that we’re the guys who are selling them the technology and the know-how to make sure that they’re getting the power that they need.

In fact, just yesterday, our administration determined China wasn’t playing fair when it came to solar power.  And so we took the first step towards leveling the playing field, because my attitude is, when the playing field is level, then American workers and American businesses are always going to win.  And that’s why we’ve got to make sure that our laws are properly enforced."

The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM)

“Today’s announcement affirms what U.S. manufacturers have long known: Chinese manufacturers have received unfair and WTO-illegal subsidies,” said Steve Ostrenga, chief executive officer of Helios Solar Works in Milwaukee, Wis., a founding manufacturer of CASM.  “We appreciate the Commerce Department’s hard work in bringing these subsidies to light, and we look forward to addressing all of China’s unfair trade practices in the solar industry.”

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that the Chinese government provided its manufacturers with more than $ 30 billion in subsidies. As a result of China’s subsidies as well as its industry’s dumped pricing, CASM contends, at least 12 domestic producers have undertaken layoffs, gone bankrupt or closed plants in all regions of the country over the past two years.

“If we address unfair trade practices in the U.S. solar market, we can get back to our business of expanding American manufacturing and jobs in the renewable energy sector,” said Carlo Santoro, director of business development at MX Solar USA in Somerset, N.J., a founding manufacturing member of CASM. “We look forward to getting back to the fair and legal competition that serves everyone best.” 
 

SEIA (The Solar Energy Industries Association)

Rhone Resch, president and CEO of SEIA, said in a release, "It is important to note that this is a preliminary determination and the anti-dumping decision will be rendered in May. If the tariffs remain at these levels, we do not think that this will have a material impact on the U.S. market."

Resch added, "The trade action against Chinese imports is indicative of a growing trend of trade conflict in the global solar energy industry that threatens to curtail the rapid growth we have seen in this market — both in the U.S. and abroad. Governments and industry must recognize that while trade remedy proceedings such as anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations are an important part of the global trade rules, so too are collaboration and negotiations. This is why SEIA is taking a proactive lead to create a dialogue with several leading national solar trade associations and governments from around the world."

Suntech Power Holdings

"This initial decision reflects the reality that Suntech's global success is based on free and fair competition. Nonetheless, unilateral trade barriers, large or small, will further delay our transition away from fossil fuels at a time when the majority of Americans demand cleaner and more secure energy such as solar," said Andrew Beebe, Suntech's Chief Commercial Officer."

"As a global company with global supply chains and manufacturing facilities in three countries, we are well prepared for the future. Regardless of whether tariffs are imposed on solar cells from China, we can provide our customers in the U.S. with hundreds of megawatts of high-quality and affordable solar products that are not subject to tariffs. As a local manufacturer with production in Arizona, we will continue to remain an active member of the American solar industry and maintain focus on making solar energy affordable for everyone, everywhere," continued Beebe.

Jigar Shah, President of the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE)

Today’s preliminary determination by the Department of Commerce imposing low tariffs on imported crystalline solar cells/modules from China, will, by itself, have a limited negative impact on the U.S. solar industry and its 100,000 employees. It also demonstrates that the Commerce Department did not find the Chinese government engaged in massive subsidization, as SolarWorld and CASM claim.
 
But before we can rest easy, there will be another, and what is likely to be, a much bigger shoe that will drop when the Commerce Department announces anti-dumping duties in May.
 
As we have stated before, imposing high tariffs would undercut President Obama’s effort to expand renewable energy just as solar power is realizing unprecedented growth and competitiveness in the marketplace.

This is an initial victory for America’s solar industry and its 100,000 employees.
 

Yingli Green Energy

"As we stated in our testimony to the International Trade Commission, we are not dumping, nor do we believe that we are unfairly subsidized," said Robert Petrina, Managing Director of Yingli Green Energy Americas. "We will continue to fight for affordable solar energy and further growth of the tens of thousands of U.S. solar jobs that we help to create. Regardless of the outcome of this proceeding, we remain dedicated to the U.S. solar market."

Today's preliminary decision on the anti-subsidy side will be followed by another preliminary decision for anti-dumping, scheduled for May 16, 2012. No final tariff decisions will be made until the International Trade Commission completes its investigation as well, which is scheduled to occur before the end of 2012.

"The important thing to remember is that tariffs are bad for the entire solar industry," said Liansheng Miao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yingli Green Energy. "We will continue to support the U.S. as an important solar market, and believe that global trade and fair competition will persevere. Today's decision validates that."

CAP (Center for American Progress)

Today’s Commerce Department decision to levy import tariffs on Chinese solar panels is a positive step forward in a much larger effort to level the clean energy playing field between the United States and China. I applaud SolarWorld for pursuing this case and utilizing the trade institutions designed to address these types of complaints. Too many U.S. companies avoid filing trade petitions because they fear Chinese government retaliation. When U.S. companies allow those fears to prevail, the end result is tacit accommodation to illegal trade behavior, and that can erode U.S. competitiveness and drive entire U.S. industries out of business.

This countervailing duty (subsidy) tariff is lower than many industry analysts expected. It is important to note, however, that in trade cases where subsidy and dumping petitions are filed in tandem, the dumping tariff is generally the higher import duty. The Commerce Department is expected to issue the SolarWorld dumping determination in May. At this point, it is far from clear what the end result of this case will be and how it will impact manufacturers in the United States and China.

One thing that we can say based on this relatively low tariff is that the Commerce Department did not apply punitive duties in this ruling. Instead, the Commerce Department based this decision on its own review of the evidence and only levied tariffs based on what it could prove. Chinese companies and officials are watching this case very closely, and hopefully this action will serve as an example in China for how these cases can and should be handled impartially and according to law.

The United States and China are the world’s biggest energy consumers. Keeping our borders open to allow and encourage clean energy trade can stimulate competition, speed innovation, and bring down costs to speed our transition toward a clean energy economy. To be equally beneficial for both countries, however, it is critical that U.S. and Chinese companies compete on a level playing field. At present, it is clear that the field is often far from level. Allowing and encouraging U.S. companies to file trade petitions such as this one is critical for correcting that imbalance.

These tariffs are designed to counteract government subsidies in China that artificially suppress Chinese manufacturing costs and give Chinese solar panels a pricing advantage in the U.S. market. Today’s announcement is the first of two long-awaited tariff verdicts on two trade petitions filed last October by SolarWorld Industries America Inc. A Commerce Department decision on the second trade petition (dumping) is expected in May, and the May ruling could substantially increase the cumulative import tariffs levied on Chinese solar panels in the United States.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley
 
“American workers can compete with anyone in the world when we have a fair playing field. Unfortunately, China’s subsidies have distorted the solar panel market and cost Americans good manufacturing jobs. This ruling will begin the process of making China play by the rules, enabling our businesses to compete on a level playing field.”

Go Green

Below, we highlight ten key stats provided in the report’s free Executive Summary. The Full Report, along with annual subscriptions, can be purchased at http://www.greentechmedia.com/research/ussmi.

#10) Eight. Number of states that installed over 50 megawatts in 2011

Eight individual states installed over 50 megawatts in 2011, up from only two in 2009 and five in 2010. Those states were California, New Jersey, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina.

Top 10 States: PV Installations, 2011 (megawatts)

Source: U.S. Solar Market Insight: 2011 Year-in-Review

#9) 1,219 megawatts Total U.S. PV module production in 2011

PV module production fell from 1,273 megawatts in 2010 to 1,219 MW in 2011 as a result of global oversupply and the shuttering of a number of production facilities. The U.S. remained a hotspot for thin film production, with 32 percent of all module production coming from CdTe, CIGS, and amorphous silicon.

# $ 4.08 per watt Weighted Average Installed System Price in Q4 2011

Thanks to a combination of falling component prices, compressed installer margins and a shift toward larger systems, weighted average system prices fell 20 percent over the course of 2011 to end the year at $ 4.08 per watt.

#7) 28 Number of projects over 10 megawatts completed in 2011

In 2009, only two PV projects over 10 megawatts were completed in the U.S. In 2010, the number rose to eight. In 2011, 28 such projects were connected to the grid, marking the true beginning of a burgeoning utility-scale solar market.

#6) 40 percent Average module price decline from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011

Average PV module prices in the fourth quarter of 2011 fell to $ 1.15 per watt, down 40 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. These precipitous price declines were a boon to installers but created an extraordinarily difficult year for manufacturers.

#5)  776 megawatts PV installations in Q4 2011

The U.S. installed 776 megawatts in Q4 2011, up 64 percent over Q3 2011 and up 115 percent over Q4 2010. Every market segment had a record quarter, as did ten individual states. 

#4) 41 percent Portion of solar installations from the utility market

The utility market grew 185 percent in 2011 to reach 758 megawatts and contribute 41 percent of all installations in 2011. There are over 9,000 megawatts of projects with signed utility PPAs in the pipeline, and over 3,000 megawatts currently in construction.

#3) 29 percent California’s share of national installations in 2011

California’s share of national installations remained steady at 29 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, the next six states grew from 45 percent in 2010 to 51 percent in 2011, indicating that the U.S. market remains reliant on top-tier states for overall growth.

#2) 7.0 percent U.S. Market share of global PV installations

The U.S. market share of global installations grew from 5 percent in 2010 to 7 percent in 2011, the country’s largest market share since 2007. We forecast continued market share growth over the next few years, ultimately reaching nearly 15 percent in 2016.

#1) 109 percent PV installation growth rate in 2011 over 2010

The U.S. installed 1,855 megawatts of PV in 2011, up 109 percent from the 887 megawatts installed in 2010. Growth occurred in every market segment and in 18 of the 23 states we track closely. The value of all PV installations rose to $ 8.4 billion, up from $ 5.0 billion in 2010.

In short, 2011 was a historic year for solar in the U.S.

To learn more about the U.S. Solar Market Insight report series and subscriptions, click here.

Go Green

This week we've learned that Hyundai Heavy Industries, another Korean giant with photovoltaic aspirations, is calling it quits, according to an article in the Korea Times.

And we've heard rumors that Korea's LG is also restructuring its solar business.

Greentech Media has long viewed Samsung and the Korean industrial machine as a force to be reckoned with in greentech and solar.

But the downturn in the solar market might be proving too much for even the Korean giants to bear. At least in crystalline silicon.

The report in the Korea Times quoted an unnamed Samsung official as saying, "The solar-cell market is reeling from continued oversupply amid aggressive expansion by Chinese cell manufacturers." The official continued, "We are evaluating the business on a 'zero-base.'"

Hyundai is "scrapping plans to build two solar photovoltaic power plants roughly valued at $ 700 million in Arizona," according to company officials. "The market demand is way below expectations. The feasibility is lost," according to a source quoted in the article. Hyundai had about 500 megawatts of production capacity in Korea.

Hyundai is looking to sell off its hundreds of millions of dollars of crystalline silicon production equipment from factories which had very low utilization rates.

Greentech Media spoke with Samsung executives last year and they expressed an interest in dominating solar everywhere from silicon to thin film to inverters. Last year, Samsung said it would invest approximately $ 20.6 billion and boost employment by around 45,000 as part of its expansion into solar, energy efficiency, light-emitting diodes and other green markets. Samsung had said it wanted to be number one in solar by 2015. Samsung also said it would invest around $ 6.6 billion into solar and wind projects into Ontario.

Depending on one's viewpoint, Korea exiting the crystalline silicon business could be a sign of timidity or genius.

Despite the withdrawal from crystalline silicon (c-Si), Korean industrial giants continue to invest in thin-film solar with the hope of beating c-Si on price or performance.

HelioVolt received a white-knight investment from Korea's SK Innovation for its CIGS technology in September of last year. Stion, also a CIGS vendor, received a major investment from Korean equity firms as it established a Korean subsidiary. Thin film firms like NanoSolar or MiaSolé or CPV firms like Energy Innovations would welcome investment from Korean sources.

A senior staffer at a top solar manufacturer commented that this was inevitable — latecomers to the market expecting a high margin business were going to be confronted by compressing margins in an increasingly competitive business. This was the mark of consolidation in the market.

The bottom line is some pain for Korea and Korean workers, but the beginning of a global market rationalization with consolidation and a reduction in c-Si cell and module oversupply. The market will emerge healthier for it.

Go Green

SunPower just announced the first commercial deployment of its C7 low-concentration PV tracker.

SunPower, Salt River Project and Arizona State University are building a 1-megawatt, low-concentration photovoltaic power plant at ASU's Polytechnic campus in Mesa, Arizona.

SunPower claims its C7 Tracker has up to a 20 percent lower levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) than competing technologies. SunPower did not clarify whether those competing technologies were other low-concentration PV (LCPV) or fixed flat-plate solar panels or panels on trackers. The firm did maintain that the C7 tracker provides "the lowest levelized cost of electricity for utility-scale solar power plants available today." SunPower also said that "a 400-megawatt C7 Tracker power plant requires less than 70 megawatts of SunPower solar cells."

The concentrator would effectively allow the company to increase the power output of its utility-scale solar plants at a time when gaining efficiency the old-fashioned way is becoming more challenging. SunPower will soon mass-produce monocrystalline solar cells with an efficiency rating of more than 23 percent, and the company has demonstrated new cells in the lab that can hit 24 percent.

One unanswered question is the impact of the increased heat and "hotspots" on the silicon solar cells. It also remains unclear why SunPower would be looking at alternative architectures at this juncture in its corporate career in this difficult market.

Here's a picture of SunPower's C7 tracker at SPI.

Here's a video of the SunPower tracker:

Skyline Solar won a $ 1.85 million contract from the Department of Defense for deployment of its low-concentration PV solar power plants at two domestic military sites. Skyline claims that its 14-suns concentrator "delivers an LCOE of less than ten cents per kWh in sunny climates."

Skyline's concentrators (see picture below) are also being deployed on what will be the largest CPV plant in Latin America, located in Durango, Mexico and totaling 500 kilowatts.

Low-concentration solar systems and components like those of SunPower, Skyline, or Solaria, Zytech, Banyan, and others have the benefit of being able to ride the silicon cell cost curve down as the price of that commodity continues to plunge. But the unique design of LCPV still has to compete with the massive flat panel supply chain as that industry continues to scrub out hardware costs and soft costs. What's more, aggressive estimates of LCOE by Skyline and SunPower have to be taken with a grain of salt when the product has accumulated only a scant amount of field data.

Go Green

REhnu (pronounced “renew”) is a relatively new name in the concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) world. They're early stage and have a slightly different twist on the architecture of a CPV system.

But let's start with the name. The 'RE' in REhnu stands for Renewable Energy. The "hnu" is from the formula E=hν or E=hnu, which relates the energy ('E') of a photon to the photon’s frequency, given by the Greek letter ν, or “nu,” and Planck’s constant 'h.'

Which, in case you haven't been keeping track, places us deep in central Nerdistan.

Dr. Roger Angel, the designer of the CPV product and, presumably, the company's name, has a background in astronomy at the University of Arizona. Angel leads the UA solar high concentration photovoltaics research group and has co-authored three patents covering the technology licensed by REhnu. His technological innovations are used to make the world’s largest and most aspheric telescope mirrors.

Building the world's biggest telescopes has, in Angel's view, given him the ability to think through the CPV design as a system. It's allowed Angel to approach the problem without any previously held conceptions about CPV — and not to feel compelled to make CPV look like flat-panel PV.

Angel is looking to drive costs down to a dollar per watt installed by scrubbing cost out of a few areas — primarily by using the least amount of glass and steel possible.

REhnu's design uses what Angel calls "the native form of manufactured glass" — the 3-meter sizes from a glass factory — as the reflectors. The design allows a window-glass factory to be modified to produce the glass reflectors, which are then arranged on a steel space frame. The space frame has rigid nodes and the "mechanics of the 2-axis tracker respects the nodes," according to Angel.

The system operates at 1000X concentration, and with a cost of $ 5.00 per square centimeter for the triple-junction solar cells, Angel says that gets the cell cost down to 15 cents per watt. The system doesn't place a lens on every solar cell, as is the case in almost every CPV architecture. A ball lens at the focus of each large dish sends the same amount of light power to each of 36 cells, so that all of them produce the same amount of electrical current. Active cooling is used rather than massive aluminum heat sinks to scrub off heat.

Prototype of REhnu's 20-kilowatt CPV system

Angel estimates the mass of steel as 100 kilograms per kilowatt of output and expects to have one complete 2+kilowatt dish/receiver working by the end of May and eight of them in a full 20-kilowatt system early next year.  

Land usage is estimated at 4 acres per megawatt, while the ground-clearance and open design of the space frame are designed to be gentle to the environment at the installation site. 

UA has raised $ 4 million in R&D funding, mostly from the DOE and Science Foundation Arizona. REhnu has raised about $ 2 million, so far. Once the full tracker unit is populated and generating 20 kilowatts, Angel looks to raise a $ 25 million Round A to build manufacturing facilities and get to two megawatts of production.   

CPV vendors remain in a ruthless cost race with the crystalline silicon solar behemoths while holding a potential advantage in high-temperature environments. Perhaps a telescope scientist can crack this nut.

3.1 meter-square reflector prototype made from a single sheet of glass at the University of Arizona
 

Go Green

2006: Company founded in San Jose, California — Yogesh Rane, Director of Emerging Markets; CEO, Sanjeev Chitre

June 2009: GlobalWatt considering locating a $ 189 million, 400 full-time-employee solar panel factory in Corpus Christi, Texas providing the city’s Business and Job Development Group coughs up $ 2.8 million in incentives over five years, according to Caller.com.

December 2009: GlobalWatt claimed it would drive 500 jobs and $ 177 million to Saginaw, Michigan instead of Texas; received incentives from Saginaw, and set up shop in Michigan.

December 2010: GlobalWatt was found to be selling five solar panels on eBay. The panels were manufactured by Hindivac, an Indian PV and module supplier with cells that the firm claimed were made by Suniva, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

December 2011: GlobalWatt was evicted from its factory according to ABC12. GlobalWatt's Saginaw plant employed about a dozen workers, according to reports.

December 27, 2011: GlobalWatt claims it is moving manufacturing to Copemish, Michigan to be near its module distributor, according to this report on mlive.com.

According to reports at ABC12, the CEO "declined to comment on production or how many people have been hired" in the last year. Chitra then attributed some blame to Solyndra, saying, "Companies like Solyndra have dried up capital."

The company's website also features mobile solar power systems and water filtration systems. The firm has been looking to raise $ 5 million since September 2010, according to this filing. Other executives in the company, according to the same filing, include Rohit Arora, Michael Thompson, and Moji Zahedi.  Phone calls to the Saginaw factory result in a disconnected line message, calls to the San Jose, Calif office are unanswered, and the company has not responded to emails.

The sooner the Solar Shakeout eliminates the uncompetitive solar companies, the healthier the industry will be in 2013 and 2014.

We've watched a growing list of solar firms throw in the towel (SV Solar, Solasta, Wakonda, OptiSolar, SpectraWatt, BP Solar, Stirling Energy, Senergen, Solon, Solar Millennium, Off-Grid Solar, Evergreen Solar, Solyndra, Soliant) and we'll see many more in the coming year. Companies currently at risk in 2012 include publicly held ECD and Hoku Solar, both in danger of delisting and bankruptcy.

What might be a GlobalWatt product (from GlobalWatt's Facebook page):

Claims of UL certification :

Go Green

***

I want to thank Hari Chandra Polavarapu, the Managing Director of Solar/Cleantech Research at AURIGA USA LLC, who wrote a post to educate me.

Hari, I write to you not from one trading desk, but representing the 1,000 or more rooftops where I have deployed solar.

I write to you representing more than 97 percent of the U.S. solar industry. These are the people who have not only visited factories where solar panels are manufactured, but who have actually worked in those factories, and many more who have worked assembling, installing, and maintaining solar systems.

At a trading desk, one is managing portfolios, trading prices of commodities like solar panels and more. You may even be concerned about the cost of silicon chips used in computing (but we are not complaining about the low cost of silicon chips
manufactured outside the U.S. in this dialogue).

Every day, we, the actual people who work in the solar industry, are interested in growing the deployment of solar, particularly at a cost that creates grid parity, location by location. More importantly, we are interested in preserving and growing
the 100,000 American jobs in the industry, which, according to the 2011 National Solar Jobs Census published by the Solar Foundation, grew 6.8 percent between 2010 and 2011 — nearly ten times higher than the national average employment rate
of 0.7 percent.

Real jobs. Real people. Using real tools.

By the way — on the theoretical stuff, many of your colleagues disagree with you and might provide you with a bit of insight and education. See below:

Photon Consulting: “Overall, trade restrictions between the U.S. and China will destroy value in the global PV sector. Equally important, imposition of artificially higher prices for solar consumers would undoubtedly slow the adoption of solar
power in key markets such as the US.”

Jefferies: “The U.S. solar industry, already suffering from a lack of financing, will experience higher module prices and lower demand if countervailing duties are imposed as early as March 2012.”

Axiom: “There is simply more supply than there is demand," Johnson said. "It's very simple economics." And it's not the Chinese's fault, Johnson said: "You can't complain because a guy is beating you," Johnson said.

AEI Research: “Higher module prices are likely to lower the excess return, putting solar energy at risk of losing years of economic potential as a result.”

SEMI: “This case could lead to significant price increases that could have a significant deleterious impact on SEMI members, many of whom are upstream providers of high-value-added equipment and materials. It will also impact
downstream service providers, such as installers, where a majority of solar industry jobs are concentrated."

Go Green

Gudmundson took the firm quiet and the company radically reworked its product and its strategy.

And now GreenVolts has returned, armed with a new design and a new $ 35 million VC round, which includes $ 20 million from ABB Technology Ventures, the VC arm of ABB, the power and automation technology giant. The GreenVolts CPV technology is a good match for ABB's recent equity stake in Novatec Solar, a provider of linear fresnel lenses. The round brings GreenVolts' VC fundraising total to more than $ 115 million since its founding in 2005.

While GreenVolts was re-inventing itself, Amonix, Soitec, and SolFocus became the dominant leaders in the CPV sub-sector, with hundreds of megawatts in their PPA pipelines. 

But Eric Romo, a VP and founder at the firm, doesn't see those CPV vendors as the competition. He told Greentech Media, "The competition isn't CPV, it's PV. How we measure and think about ourselves is as a solar company, not a CPV company." He adds that GreenVolts has won a dozen projects (about 3 megawatts total) in competitive bids against flat-panel photovoltaics.

Romo claims that CPV has "the potential to be the next leg in the curve," adding, "The next phase is showing CPV is not just as good, but better than PV." He acknowledges that if CPV vendors expect customers to pay more for CPV because of some of its advantages, such as its space-saving compact size, "That's just not going to happen."

According to the VP, "Everything about our CPV product has changed. Everything changed because we needed to get to the right price and performance. It had to be better than other PV solutions."

Romo emphasized, "We are a systems company."

The press release from the firm states that GreenVolts is "the industry’s first complete and fully integrated solar system, including modules, trackers, inverters, and energy management software." Although not willing to go on record, a competitor in the tightly knit CPV space told me that this was hardly a CPV industry first and that most CPV vendors provide complete systems.

What that "systems" claim is, really, is an attempt to find some or any differentiation for the GreenVolts product in a brutal, commodity electron market.

One of the things that is different for GreenVolts is the concentration level. Romo said that GreenVolts is at 1,300 times concentration, while Soitec and Amonix are at about 500X and SolFocus is in the 650X neighborhood. This means that GreenVolts' optical design and tracking has to be extremely robust and accurate — and that could result in an improvement in efficiency and energy harvest. High concentration can have its drawbacks as well, with heat and hotspots playing havoc with chip performance and longevity.

Romo asserts that the tracker architecture is different than any other two-axis trackers and that the inverter is designed to work with the motion controller: it's not a multipurpose inverter but a specific device made just for CPV.

Like most CPV system vendors, GreenVolts will buy the III-V multi-junction solar cell from existing cell vendors such as Spectrolab, Emcore, Azure Space or newcomers Solar Junction, Semprius, JDSU, and Cyrium. 

ABB will sell the system for GreenVolts, providing a turnkey CPV system to its customers. ABB will essentially serve as the sales force and turnkey EPC for the startup. 

OK. Sounds good. So how much does it cost?

If you're competing head-to-head with PV panels at $ 1.00 per watt or solar farms with an all-in cost of $ 3.50 per watt, GreenVolts should be able to furnish a dollar per watt or LCOE number that shows why they can win business against flat-panel PV. That's where Romo was less than completely communicative with this reporter. He said that because they were a full systems company, the dollar-per-watt value was not comparable to the PV module dollar-per-watt price and that there was a "nomenclature" mismatch because of the apples-to-oranges nature of the comparison of a CPV system to a PV installation.

Romo noted that the fact that the firm is winning business against PV vendors underscores the value and advantages of its CPV approach and the potential for CPV to deliver more kilowatt-hours per kilowatt in some environments.

Still, in a 1.5-gigawatt U.S. PV market and an 18-gigawatt global solar market, scale is vital — and GreenVolts has to prove it can scale, scrub out cost, and genuinely out-perform and out-compete against PV and its CPV brethren, even as solar pricing continues to drop. Having ABB as a partner will certainly help with sales and bankability. In addition to GreenVolts, ABB Technology Ventures has recently made investments in ECOtality (EV infrastructure), Trilliant (smart grid communications), Power Assure (data center efficiency), Pentalum (wind power site assessment), and Aquamarine (wave power). ABB has also made a number of smart grid and EV-related acquisitions.

Greentech Media Research has forecast that CPV installations will exceed one gigawatt per year by 2015. GTM Research has profiles of all of the relevant industry players and a thorough analysis of the sector here.

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