First Solar inaugurates second German plant

Share

After a short period that First Solar may rather like to forget, what with CEO Rob Gillette suddenly leaving and the company recording a big fourth quarter (Q4) earnings miss, the event has given First Solar a reason to celebrate.

The new plant took one year to construct and bring up to full operations, and represents an investment of 170 million euros. The ramp-up of production took four months to complete. First Solar’s workforce at Frankfurt (Oder) has increased from 650 to 1,200.

pv magazine was given an exclusive tour of the facility in September with management admitting that while given market conditions the firm is "under pressure", First Solar had not been forced to alter efficiency or cost roadmaps to compete in the market.

The company also emphasized that module efficiency gains are crucial to its cost-per-watt reduction strategy. At present First Solar reports module efficiencies of 11.7 cents and its cost per watt performance to amounting to USD0.75 cents.

Managing director of Manufacturing at the Frankfurt (Oder) plants, Burghard von Westerholt, also told pv magazine that while costs are important, quality remains crucial. As such, a feature of the new FF02 plant is a quality assurance laboratory, where modules are subjected to a wide range of tests, performed by its 50 technicians.

The FF02 inauguration today was attended by Brandenburg Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck, Environment Ministry representatives and the Chairman of the parliamentary Greens / Bündis 90 Party of the German Parliament. At the same time, the production of First Solar’s one-millionth module produced at the site was recognized.

FF02 was built and equipped using First Solar’s "Smart Copy" principal, which allows improvements made at one plant to be rolled out worldwide at the company’s plants. It also demonstrates First Solar’s "complete life-cycle approach to manufacturing", featuring g a modernized module recycling facility and two rooftop photovoltaic installations.

The rooftop installations are worth 2.8 MW, with FF02’s installation 0.2 MWs bigger than FF01. This is not, however, the only difference between the two plants at the Frankfurt (Oder) site. Touring the FF02 facility a sense of space is apparent, with the plant covering 50,000 square meters.

In a release announcing today’s event, Tymen DeJong, Senior Vice President for Global Operations was quoted as saying: "Our additional investment shows: Germany is a key market for solar energy and an important production location for First Solar."

Popular content

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.