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By John Fleck
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 06:51 |
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 Mayor Martin Chavez is scheduled to tour the new Schott Solar plant at Mesa del Sol this morning, where a buzz of activity as the project nears completion belies the general economic malaise.
Schott's official grand opening is planned for Monday (5/11), and I had a chance to tour the site recently. Photovoltaic panels that turn sunlight directly into electricity and long glass tubes used in concentrating solar plants are already rolling off the production line in small batches as workers fine-tune their processes. The work force is already up at around 300, near the maximum, and as I watched the swarm of construction workers still working at the site, my reaction was similar to Kate Galbraith's in this New York Times piece, written after visiting a similar site in Oregon:Expanding a factory? Picking out carpeting? Did anyone tell him that there’s a recession?
Buoyed by the potential promise of a green economy, Mr. Klebensberger, who heads the American branch of SolarWorld AG, a company based in Bonn, Germany, is ramping up production of solar cells in a retrofitted factory that had its grand opening last October — in the teeth of the financial crisis. The story in Oregon and here is the same: tax incentives are making the U.S. market look very attractive in the long run for European solar companies looking for fertile ground.
(Image courtesy Schott Solar)
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 May 2009 07:49 )
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