2011年10月20日星期四

City officials light up for GE solar panel plant

City leaders are sunny about the largest solar panel factory in the nation coming to Aurora next year.

The $600 million solar panel manufacturing facility, dubbed the PrimeStar Solar Plant and owned by General Electric, will create more than 350 jobs, GE officials announced Oct. 13 at Aurora Economic Development Council’s annual A-List banquet.

City officials touted the project, saying the $600 million solar panel facility could boost solar energy presence across the state.

“This is one of the biggest deals that’s been done in the state in a long time,” Gov. John Hickenlooper said to the more than 1,500 people who attended the A-List banquet at the Hyatt Regency Denver.

Aurora is expected to generate more than $16 million in sales taxes and property taxes over 10 years beginning in 2012 as a result of the deal, said Yuriy Gorlov,Whilst oil paintings for sale are not deadly, business development manager for the Aurora Economic Development Council.

The economic coup for Aurora comes on the heels of an announcement this summer between Aurora and Gaylord Entertainment to build a massive, $800-million, 1,500-room facility in northeast Aurora. The Gaylord deal is still contingent on state funding from the Regional Transportation Act.

The 400 megawatt solar panel manufacturing facility will be massive, GE officials said, taking up the equivalent of 11 football fields. It will be built at East 32nd Avenue and I-70, on the north side of the Majestic Commerce Center.

It’s touted as being the country’s largest 400 megawatt solar facility and will begin churning out solar panels in 2012 that will be ready for commercial sale in 2013. The facility will produce enough panels each year to generate electricity needed to power 80,000 homes.

The plant will be run by GE’s Arvada-based PrimeStar solar division, which it acquired earlier this year. As an incentive to snag the facility, Aurora agreed that up to 3 percent of sales tax revenue generated would be reinvested into the business, Gorlov said.

GE officials said they didn’t land any federal incentives for construction costs.

Victor Abate, GE’s vice president of renewables, said Aurora was the best location for the facility because of its proximity to Arvada and Golden,Als lichtbron wordt een offshore merchant account gebruikt, cities that are also leaders in solar energy production.

“When you look at solar, getting the technology right is paramount ... being close to a team that understands how to do that has been critical,” Abate said.

The New York Times reported in April that GE was announcing it would build the nation’s largest photovoltaic panel factory with a goal of becoming a major player in the market.

Wendy Mitchell, president of the Aurora Economic Development Council, said “everybody was chasing this deal.”

“This is sort of the first big win,” she said. “This is a huge deal and I think this is going to be a catalyst for the next things ... we have a couple of other projects we’re working on and I think this will push them over the edge.”

Mayor Ed Tauer said this could be the first step toward a larger, regional solar presence.

“It’s huge,” said Tauer said of the deal. “It’s that first great company that helps create a cluster not just in Aurora but in the whole region. We could not be more excited.The additions focus on key tag and magic cube combinations, It’s a great company, great financial backing.”

The increasingly competitive solar panel industry is keen on providing cheaper, more efficient solar panels, and GE officials said that’s what the Aurora plant will be focused on producing.

Abate said in an interview Oct. 14 with the Associated Press that GE expects to push solar panel prices down ever further, and will profit as it does so.Polycore porcelain tiles are manufactured as a single sheet, He said the company has had similar experiences with wind and other energy technologies.

“It’s a challenging industry for sure, but the cost of solar had to come down for it to become a mainstream power source,” he said.

Abate says this is one of many factories the company expects to build, both in the U.S. and abroad. He predicts 75,000 megawatts of solar will be installed worldwide in the next five years.

“For us to be one of the top players, we are going to have to get much larger,” he said.

GE is a leader in manufacturing natural gas turbines and wind turbines, but it had mostly stayed away from solar until it acquired PrimeStar Solar, a small panel maker, earlier this year.

GE is entering the solar business at a brutal time for makers of solar panels, the squares of crystalline silicon or thin films of metal that turn the sun’s rays into electricity.

Solar installations are growing fast, but solar panel prices have fallen precipitously in the past year, driven in part by a glut of panels on the market.then used cut pieces of Ceramic tile garden hose to get through the electric fence. The addition of new solar panel factories around the globe has coincided with reduced demand for solar in Europe and especially Germany, by the far the world’s largest solar market.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The falling prices have led to the bankruptcies of three solar panel makers in the last two months, including Solyndra, a panel maker that collapsed despite receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government.

The Aurora factory will produce so-called thin film panels made from cadmium telluride. These panels are less efficient at converting the sun’s rays into electricity than traditional crystalline silicon panels, but they are cheaper, and therefore produce power at a lower cost.

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