With New SD Factory, Soitec Joins Top 3 U.S. Solar Panel Makers

Crowd at opening of Soitec concentrating photovoltaic factory in San Diego

In his first official proclamation, newly elected San Diego Mayor Bob Filner declared today as “Soitec Day” in the nation’s eighth largest city, capping a grand opening ceremony for a new solar panel factory completed here recently by Soitec, the French semiconductor manufacturer.

The automated plant was designed to make concentrating photovoltatic (CPV) solar panels for use in solar power plants throughout the American Southwest.

Soitec signed five contracts with San Diego Gas & Electric (“SDG&E”) in early 2011 to provide a combined total of 155 megawatts CPV solar generated electricity, enough renewable energy for more than 60,000 households. The contracts, approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, stipulated that Soitec’s CPV panels would be manufactured in San Diego. Altogether, the projects are intended to produce enough renewable solar energy to serve more than 60,000 households a year.

Soitec also has agreed to supply its CPV panels for a 150-megawatt project under development in Imperial County by Tenaska Solar Ventures. Plans call for electricity generated by the Tenaska solar plant to be sent into the power grid via SDG&E’s Sunrise Powerlink, a high-voltage transmission line completed in June.

With the new San Diego manufacturing plant, Soitec becomes one of the top three manufacturers of solar modules in the U.S., according to André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Soitec’s chairman and CEO

Soitec acquired the 176,000-square-foot building on 14.8 acres from Sony a year ago. Soitec installed a fully automated CPV production line that became operational in October. The new facility represents a total investment of more than $150 million for Soitec, Auberton-Hervé said to nearly 300 Soitec employees and guests who attended the event.

The total investment includes a $25 million grant the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Soitec in June to help support construction of the facility in San Diego. Such grants are intended to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.