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Monday, November 24, 2008

focus on Schott AG: Privately held German-based international firm spe cializing in high-tech glass, ranging from kitchenware and TV screens to fiber optics and pharmaceutical packaging.
        Schott Solar: Makes glass-based products used in generating solar energy. Plants in Czech Republic, Germany and Spain. First U.S. manufacturi ng plant located outside Boston. Second under construction in Albuquerque.
       Albuquerque site: 80 acres at Mesa del Sol, south of Albuquerque airport, 250,000 square feet of building space with room to expand.
       Albuquerque employment: 100 currently, 350 when operating nex t spring.
       Related store page A1: Schott and newly approved solar tax credits.
   

European company Schott AG scheduled to open solar plant at Mesa del Sol

By John Fleck
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
    German high-tech glass industry giant Schott AG is bucking economic trends and is on schedule to open its new solar manufacturing plant at Mesa del Sol south of Albuquerque in spring, creating 350 jobs in the process, company officials said.
        Green-vested construction workers gathered last week at the site for a lunch-time barbecue, a thank you from company management for their efforts getting the plant open on time.
        The 250,000 square feet of building space being erected at the site includes two adjacent manufacturing plants to make equipment for two different types of devices used to generate electricity from the sun.
        Schott has already hired about 100 workers, most of them locals, who have been traveling to Europe to train in the company's existing manufacturing operations, said Zane Rakes, a former Intel manager who came on last summer to head Schott's Albuquerque operations.
        When the plants are up and running next spring, Schott expects to employ 350 people here, Rakes said.
        Schott, already a major player in the European solar industry, wanted a plant in the United States to serve the growing sun belt solar energy market, Rakes said.
        "Albuquerque is the finest large-scale manufacturing center that Schott's going to have in the United States," Rakes said in an interview.
        The plant's products will tap into a growing set of tax and other government incentives at the state and federal level intended to encourage the development of renewable energy sources in the United States.
        Solar energy currently makes up a tiny share of the U.S. electricity supply, less than 1 percent. But it is one of the fastest growing sources, increasing 35 percent in the last year, according to the federal government's Energy Information Agency.
        One of the plants will assemble 3-foot-by-5-foot rooftop solar panels that generate electric using traditional photovoltaic technology. The cells turn sunlight directly into electricity. The Schott plant will take smaller silicon cells manufactured at a Schott plant in Germany and assemble them into completed panels ready to be plugged into a power system, Rakes explained.
        The plant's finished product, complete with wires on the back to plug it directly into a power system, will then be shipped to vendors who install it on home or commercial rooftops.
        The second Schott Albuquerque factory building will build components used in utility-scale power plants, which use solar energy to generate power to be sold to retail consumers.
        Called "parabolic trough collectors," the plants use U-shaped mirrors to focus sunlight on a central pipe, heating a fluid that is then pumped through turbines to generate electricity.
        Schott's Albuquerque plant will make the specialized pipes that absorb sunlight that travels down the center of the U-shaped trough, absorbing the solar energy. The company uses a proprietary process to join the inner steel pipe carrying the fluid to an outer layer of high-tech glass. The glass-and-steel pipe has to be able to withstand being heated daily to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, then cooling to ambient temperatures at night, Rakes explained.
        In addition to the benefits provided by tax incentives and other renewable energy requirements that are easing the expansion of the solar market, Schott has also benefitted from local government incentives to build the plant here. The state of New Mexico provided $1.9 million in job training funds in June, and the city of Albuquerque earlier this month approved $1 million in infrastructure improvements, including road work, for the company.