Meyer Burger announced today that it was suspending planned construction of a silicon solar cell production facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as it is “no longer financially viable for the company.”
The Swiss technology company first announced plans for a cell factory in July 2023. The 2-GW operations in a former Intel semiconductor fabrication plant would support its solar panel assembly facility in Goodyear, Arizona, which officially began production in June. Instead, Meyer Burger said its existing cell production facility in Thalheim, Germany, will remain fully operational and continue to be the company’s core solar cell supplier.
“Under the current market conditions, these [German] solar cells are the most economical option for supplying the module production in Goodyear,” the company said in a press release.
Meyer Burger specializes in heterojunction technology (HJT), a combination of crystalline silicon and amorphous silicon thin-film. The company shut down its German solar panel production facility earlier this year due to the collapse of the European panel manufacturing market.
Meyer Burger also announced today it would not scale its Arizona solar panel assembly facility beyond 1.4 GW, but noted the building could support 2 GW or more.
I understand exactly what you are saying. The home I lived in for about 20 years, I had solar PV installed on the roof in 2005 when there was a Federal capped tax incentive of $2K and one relied on some Utility program or did out of pocket for the bulk of the Solar PV system. That system was installed using (Sanyo) HJT panels and served our energy needs for years until we sold the house. The Sanyo panels are still in service today and may last another 10 or more years of service. The system on this home today is twice the energy generation in peak watts and cost the same as the first subsidized system in 2005.
Now the the advent of the TOU rate spiking periods and that California PSPS practice starting to roll across the U.S., many more States will start doing this and a battery back up and resiliency system will be necessary next. Right now there are so many systems available and I’ve been seriously considering a Simpliphi B6.6 stackable modular system and changing out the Fronius grid tied inverters to Fronius GEN24 plus inverters. The smart home concept and home micro-grid is possible today. One doesn’t (have) to be off grid, they can become grid-agnostic and may never know when the power has gone off for a period of time.
The U.S. (needs) more in “country” supply chains including raw materials and foundries to have a local supply chain, instead of an international supply chain. Economically ‘viable’ is based on what metrics, is it based on current interest rates, current appetite of VC groups to buy into alternative energy projects or some combination of both. Until a new tariff guidance is published, there will be many sitting on the fence to see what happens next. Another quarter wasted, another ding in the application of the technology to more structures for energy generation, storage and dispatch and another quarter of excuses of “why” things aren’t increasing at least logarithmically moving forward.
“Meyer Burger also announced today it would not scale its Arizona solar panel assembly facility beyond 1.4 GW, but noted the building could support 2 GW or more.”
The tell that Meyer-Burger does not expect the demand when they first moved operations from Germany to the U.S.. This waiting for the ‘vote’ and final tariff guidance documents is throwing the wrench of chaos into the alternative energy project queues and construction queues across the U.S..
I totally get what you are saying, but this is our government you are talking about. They do not move fast, and they argue more than they create solutions. They get in their own way quite a bit.
That being said, I have been in renewables since 2008 designing thousands of projects. I never once have used Meyer Burger modules. I do not know why, but I just have never seen them be on any project of mine. Of all the hundreds of different manufacturers (I’ve seen many rise and fall), never have I used this brand of mods. So I don’t know if this is all that big of a loss, and maybe they see that they don’t have a big enough market share here in the US to justify the expenditure of cell manufacturing here in America.