First Solar - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

First Solar, Inc. is an American manufacturer of thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules, or solar panels, and a provider to PV power plants of supporting services that include finance, construction, maintenance and end-of-life panel recycling. First Solar uses cadmium telluride

Cadmium telluride

Cadmium telluride is a crystalline compound formed from cadmium and tellurium. It is used as an infrared optical window and a solar cell material. It is usually sandwiched with cadmium sulfide to form a p-n junction photovoltaic solar cell...

(CdTe) as a semiconductor to produce panels that are less expensive than those manufactured from crystalline silicon

Polycrystalline silicon

Polycrystalline silicon, also called polysilicon, is a material consisting of small silicon crystals. It differs from single-crystal silicon, used for electronics and solar cells, and from amorphous silicon, used for thin film devices and solar cells....

. In 2009, First Solar became the first solar panel manufacturing company to lower its manufacturing cost to $1 per watt (since reduced to 74 cents per watt).

The company was founded in 1990 by inventor Harold McMaster

Harold McMaster

Harold A. McMaster was an inventor with over 100 patents and entrepreneur who founded four companies. Fortune Magazine called him "The Glass Genius". He also worked on developing commercial-scale solar cell technology, and developed a new type of engine, the "McMaster Rotary Engine."McMaster was...

as Solar Cells, Inc. In 1999 it was purchased by True North Partners, LLC, who rebranded it as First Solar, Inc. The company went public in 2006, trading on the NASDAQ. Its current chief executive is Mike Ahearn, who succeeded Robert Gillette on October 25, 2011. First Solar is based in Tempe, Arizona

Tempe, Arizona

Tempe is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2010 population of 161,719. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in the East Valley section of metropolitan Phoenix; it is bordered by Phoenix and Guadalupe on the west, Scottsdale...

. As of 2010, First Solar was considered the second-largest maker of PV modules worldwide and ranked sixth in Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...

’s list of the world's 50 most innovative companies. In 2011, it ranked first on Forbes’s list of America’s 25 fastest-growing technology companies.

Technology

First Solar manufactures cadmium telluride

Cadmium telluride

(CdTe)-based photovoltaic (PV) modules, which produce electricity with a thin CdTe film on glass.In July 2011, the company reached 17.3 percent efficiency, breaking the record set by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL.)

Corporate history

In 1984, inventor and entrepreneur Harold McMaster

Harold McMaster

founded Glasstech Solar. McMaster foresaw the opportunity to manufacture low-cost, thin film cells on a large scale. After trying amorphous silicon, he shifted to CdTe at the urging of Jim Nolan and founded Solar Cells, Inc., (SCI) in 1990. In February 1999, McMaster sold the company to True North Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family

Walton family

The Walton Family is one of the richest families in the world, their wealth inherited from Bud and Sam Walton, founders of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart. The five most prominent members The Walton Family is one of the richest families in the world, their wealth inherited from Bud and Sam...

, owners of Wal-Mart. John T. Walton

John T. Walton

John Thomas Walton was a decorated United States war veteran and a son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. He was also the chairman of True North Partners, a venture capital firm...

joined the Board of the new company, and Mike Ahearn of True North became the CEO of the newly-minted First Solar. In its early years, First Solar module efficiencies were modest, about 7 percent.

First Solar launched production of commercial products in 2002 and reached an annual production of 25 megawatts (MW) in 2005. At the end of 2009, First Solar had surpassed an annual production rate of one gigawatt (GW) and was the largest PV module manufacturer in the world.

The Company is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona

Tempe, Arizona

, has manufacturing facilities in Perrysburg, Ohio

Perrysburg, Ohio

As of the census of 2000, there were 16,945 people, 6,592 households, and 4,561 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,899.2 people per square mile . There were 6,964 housing units at an average density of 780.5 per square mile...

, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

Frankfurt (Oder)

Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located on the Oder River, on the German-Polish border directly opposite the town of Słubice which was a part of Frankfurt until 1945. At the end of the 1980s it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants...

, and Kulim, Malaysia

Kulim

Kulim is the third largest town in Kedah after Alor Star and Sungai Petani is located at the South East of Kedah state and East of Penang state in Malaysia. Kulim is a district consist of 15 smaller sub-districts also known as "mukim"...

, and is in the process of building an additional manufacturing facility in Arizona. Additionally, First Solar partnered with natural gas

Natural gas

Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...

provider Enbridge

Enbridge

Enbridge Inc. is a Calgary, Alberta based company focused on three core businesses: crude oil and liquids pipelines, natural gas transportation and distribution, and green energy. The company has approximately 6,000 employees, mostly in Canada and the United States...

to build the largest PV solar energy farm in the world, located in Sarnia, Ontario

Sarnia, Ontario

Sarnia is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada . It is the largest city on Lake Huron and is located where the upper Great Lakes empty into the St. Clair River....

, near the U.S.-Canadian border.

In July 2010, First Solar formed a utility systems business group to address the large-scale PV systems solutions market. While continuing to provide modules sales and turnkey solar projects, as well as engineering, procurement, construction, and operations and maintenance services to its various customer segments, the new unit will support utility customers with an integrated, portfolio-based business model.

On October 25, 2011 the company announced that Rob Gillette would no longer serve as chief executive officer and was replaced, effective immediately by the founder, Mike Ahearn.

Market history

First Solar sells its products to solar project developers, system integrators

System integrator

A systems integrator is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as System Integration...

, and independent power producers.

Independent Power Producer

An Independent Power Producer is an entity, which is not a public utility, but which owns facilities to generate electric power for sale to utilities and end users...

Early sales were primarily in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

because of strong incentives for solar

PV financial incentives

Financial incentives for photovoltaics are incentives offered to electricity consumers to install and operate solar-electric generating systems, also known as photovoltaics . A government may offer incentives in order to encourage the PV industry to achieve the economies of scale needed to compete...

enacted in the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) of 2000 (cp. Solar power in Germany

Solar power in Germany

Germany is one of the world's top photovoltaics installers, with a solar PV capacity as of May 2011 of more than 18,000 megawatts .The German solar PV industry installed 7,400 MW from nearly one-quarter million individual systems in 2010, and solar PV provided 12 TWh of electricity in 2010, about...

). Declines and uncertainty in feed-in-tariff subsidies for solar power in European markets, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, are prompting major PV manufacturers, such as First Solar, to accelerate their expansion into other markets, including the U.S., India and China.

First Solar’s manufacturing cost per watt reached $1.23 in 2007 and $1.08 in 2008.On February 24, 2009, the cost/watt ratio broke the $1 barrier, reaching $0.98 per watt. By 2011, its production cost had fallen to $0.74 per watt.

Production history

In 2010, the company had 24 production lines with 1,502 megawatts of manufacturing capacity. Each line had a 62.6-megawatt capacity. The first factory was built in Ohio, followed by a four-line manufacturing plant in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. In April 2007, First Solar announced the construction of an additional manufacturing plant in Kulim Hi-Tech Park, Malaysia, which was expanded to four plants in 2009. In October 2008, First Solar broke ground on an expansion of its Perrysburg, Ohio facility, completed in 2010, which brought First Solar's global annual production capacity to 1,228 MW.

In 2009, First Solar invested in two additional production plants in Malaysia, consisting of four manufacturing lines each. Additionally, in the summer of 2009, First Solar announced plans to build its fourth production plant in France. In October 2010, First Solar announced it would build two new four-line manufacturing plants, one each in Vietnam and the United States. In November 2011, it announced postponing commissioning the Vietnam plant until new demand develops. With the announced expansions, First Solar will nearly double production capacity from 1.5 GW in 2010 to 2.8 GW in 2012, based on anticipated line run rates.

Country	2005 Capacity	2006 Capacity	2007 Capacity	2008 Capacity	2009 Capacity	2010 Capacity	2011 Capacity	2012 Capacity
Line capacity	25 MW	33 MW	44 MW	48 MW	53 MW	62.6 MW	63.1 MW (est)	70 MW (est)
USA	25 MW	100 MW	132 MW	143 MW	160 MW	250 MW	252 MW	560 MW
Germany	-	-	176 MW	191 MW	214 MW	250 MW	505 MW	560 MW
Malaysia	-	-	-	382 MW	854 MW	1002 MW	1514 MW	1680 MW
Total Capacity	25 MW	100 MW	308 MW	716 MW	1228 MW	1502 MW	2271 MW	2800 MW

(Source: First Solar Financial Report for Quarter 3 2011)

Market performance

First Solar earned $664.2 million, or $7.68 per share, in fiscal year 2010. Profits have shrunk significantly in 2011, falling to $61.1 million during the second quarter of 2011, but rising to $196.5 million in the third quarter. The rapidly falling prices for solar modules, higher costs, and uncertainty over European subsidies for renewable energy, are thought to be key factors in the company’s drop in profits.

Historically, the low cost of First Solar’s modules has been the key to its market performance. The use of cadmium telluride instead of silicon has allowed it to achieve a significantly lower price point ($0.75 per watt), compared to crystalline-silicon PV, which averaged $1.85 per watt in 2010. This is expected to be challenged as the global price of solar modules continues to fall. As of June 2011, the global price of modules had fallen to $1.40 per watt on average, and some analysts predict it could drop as low as $1.10 per watt in the near future.

Grid parity

First Solar has indicated that its manufacturing cost has fallen in Q4 2010 to 75 cents per watt. By 2014, it expects to drive down cost per watt to make solar modules to between 52 and 63 cents. The biggest driver of the lower costs is better efficiency.

Installations

Below is a partial list of First Solar’s solar installations and development projects:

Europe and North Africa:

Stadtwerke Trier (SWT) in Trier, Germany is one of the world’s largest thin-film solar plants. As of February 2009, it was estimated the facility would produce over 9 GWh per year, which would supply power to more than 2,400 homes each year. Additionally, it is estimated the facility will conserve 100,000 tons of CO2 over 20 years.
Walkdpolenz Solar Park near Leipzig, Germany, is the world’s largest thin-film PV power system in the world. Built and developed by Juwi Group, it has a capacity of 40MW. The facility became fully operational in 2008.
In December 2009 the Lieberose Solar Park, Germany’s biggest conversion land project (126 hectares) on a former military training area, was opened with an output of 53MW. The solar park uses 700,000 solar modules.
For the Sports Stadium Bentegodi, First Solar supplied more than 13,000 thin film modules for a rooftop installation in Verona, Italy.

North America

10 MW El Dorado Solar Power Plant
El Dorado Solar Power Plant
The 10 megawatt El Dorado Solar Power Plant is a photovoltaic facility located in Boulder City, Nevada, completed in 2008.The power from El Dorado Solar Power Plant has been sold to Pacific Gas & Electric under separate 20-year contracts.-See also:* List of concentrating solar thermal power...

in Boulder City, NV, developed by Sempra Generation, covering 88 acres. Construction began in July 2008 and the plant is owned and operated by Sempra. In April 2009, it was announced that Sempra and First Solar would construct a 48MW Copper Mountain expansion to the facility. Once the expansion is completed in early 2011, the total facility will be able to power approximately 30,000 homes.
550 MW Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obipso County CA, under a power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Asia and Australia

2,000 MW (2GW) solar plant Memorandum of Agreement signed to build solar plant in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China.

Because cadmium is a toxic material, First Solar has implemented PV module recycling programs and is sold in Europe under an EU Council RoHS exception.