Leading U.S. solar company First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) today announced it has formed a utility systems business group to address the large-scale photovoltaic (PV) market.
Rob Gillette, First Solar CEO, said this market represents the next leg of growth for the company and the industry as a whole.
First Solar is currently completing the acquisition of project developer NextLight Renewable Power. Upon completion, First Solar said it will have power purchase agreements for 2.2 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar projects in North America.
To date, First Solar has built or has under construction 189 megawatts
of utility systems projects in North America.
Jens Meyerhoff, 45, has been named president of the new group. Meyerhoff
has served as First Solar’s chief financial officer since 2006.
First Solar continues to provide a range of offerings that includes module sales and turnkey solar projects as well as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and operations and maintenance services.
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I am becoming more skeptical about photovoltaics because there is better solar technologies on the horizon. It is called concentrated solar power. It can be used to heat homes directly, cook food, create steam for electricity generation , even welding metals. Applying concentrated solar power directly is far more effective than using silicon or cadmium telluride for converting electronically to electricity which is much lower in effectivity and efficiency for the money. The only reason I can explain why concentrated solar power is not coming as fast as supposedly is probably because of the requirment to use aluminium as a reflecting agent. It appears to me that people in general are biased toward aluminium.
The very thought of using photovoltaics to run your 1500 watt electric heaters, hairdryers or even 5000 watt clothes dryers is a bit too stretching to the imagination. We will be better off applying sunlight directly in form of heat or lighting than to rely on silicon or thin film photovoltaics to do the work. I have a feeling that photovoltaics will falter as compared to solar water heating of the eighties. Concentrated solar power is the best and most sensible path to use in solar technolgies . First Solar probably will eventually adopt concentrated solar power through acquistion of companies , who knows. First Solar is the only one around that can buy any kind of new solar technology that comes up. I have seen a lot of latest concentrated solar power technologies on the Internet but all of them are still held in private companies. Concentrated solar power makes far more sense to me than photovoltaics.