Ocean Yuan, a former executive of Chinese solar manufacturer Solarfun (Nasdaq: SOLF), announced plans to create a solar manufacturing consortium in Ontario to serve the province’s FIT and MicroFIT market.
Grape Solar first appeared on the scene in Eugene, Oregon in August 2009. The company was called Centron Solar at the time, but changed the name following a trademark lawsuit filed by Germany’s CentroSolar.
The company announced plans to sell solar panels in the U.S. made by a group of 30 Chinese manufacturers.
Now Yuan is bringing the consortium idea into Ontario, where he says the supply
chain for solar energy installations is “fragmented.”
“We want to have the supply chain in Ontario and meet the Feed-in Tariff local content requirements,” CEO and President Yuan said.
According to Yuan, “The current problem in Ontario is that energy is expensive and installations are extremely slow due to a fragmented supply chain of companies offering different components and distributors who have little knowledge of the solar business. So we want to establish a supply chain of components and a well-trained installation segment that will allow us to install solar energy systems efficiently and cost effectively.”
The plan is to set up a manufacturing consortium that will begin operations at the beginning of 2011. The consortium will operate under the Grape Solar name and consist of manufacturers of solar panels, inverters, various racking systems, cables and other components.
Consortium partners currently include: Sungrow from China, a large inverter manufacturer; Patriot Solar, a manufacturer of ground-mounted systems and trackers, based in Michigan, USA; Wise Power, a manufacturer of rooftop racking systems for solar panels, based in Delaware, USA; and Blackstone Solar, a Toronto firm that manufactures solar water heaters.
Yuan said the list of partners is continuing to grow.
Angelo Lamanna, Director of Operations at Blackstone Solar, based in Toronto, said: “Grape Solar is one of the very few solar panel manufacturers that understands the challenges of Ontario FIT local content requirement. It is very exciting to see Grape Solar leading the consortium of manufacturers of panels, inverters and racking to meet the local content requirement.”
Ms. Feizhen Lu, CEO of Enersoon in Toronto, which is the joint venture partner of China’s Sungrow inverter company, said: "We are the biggest inverter manufacturer in China, but we just got started in Ontario. Instead of venturing into Ontario alone, this consortium concept really makes perfect sense; we can now leverage our strengths by combining our resources to act faster and more efficiently.”
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