Hailing from as far as Hawaii, Massachusetts, Guam, Mexico and Canada, the third annual SolarWorld Installer Summit will showcase technical, marketing and business sessions as well as an awards ceremony to recognize the biggest impacts that attendees have made in spreading solar technology nationwide.
The event takes place Tuesday through Thursday at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront and includes tours of SolarWorlds U.S. manufacturing in Hillsboro. There, the company continues its build-out of on-campus solar, as Sunlight Solar Energy Inc., a SolarWorld authorized installer, breaks ground on a 250-kilowatt solar system.
This robust turnout of highly capable installers is evidence that solar is becoming an ever-bigger part of the nations energy mix, and that its here to stay, says Ardes Johnson, U.S. vice president for SolarWorld. Along their path, they are laying the groundwork for a more sustainable energy supply for generations to come.
A backdrop for this years summit SolarWorlds largest is its celebration of SolarWorlds 40 years of U.S. production. Bill Yerkes founded Solar Technology International in mid-1975 at a time when few people viewed solar as a source of terrestrial electricity generation, then he and legacy owners did much to industrializes manufacturing of solar panels.
SolarWorld has been the U.S. legacy of Solar Technology International since buying its industrial lineage in 2006. Today, the company operates consolidated operations at a plant employing more than 800 workers in Hillsboro, Oregon the largest crystalline silicon manufacturing plant in the Western Hemisphere.
This history is captured in a video, SolarWorld: Solar History One Innovation at a Time.