The Arizona Solar Manufacturing Symposium held in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday, January 27 highlighted the current roadmap of the solar industry and Arizona’s position in the marketplace. This event was organized to encourage the development of a large-scale solar supply chain manufacturing base in the Phoenix area.

At a first glance of the speaker and sponsor list, it appeared that the conference included a significantly larger number of major solar cell manufacturers globally out of the estimated 394 producers; however, only a handful of companies were present including: First Solar, Suntech Power Holdings, Global Solar, Stirling Energy Systems, BrightSource Energy, Schott Solar, Solon and a few others were in attendance. However, other elements of the supply chain were represented such as: Air Products (process gases), General Plasma (process equipment), TUV Rheinland (panel testing), Eaton (components), and Albiasa (project development). Nonetheless, First Solar and Suntech stand #1 and #2 in global market share, respectively.

A recurrent theme throughout the Symposium was the need for favorable government support including tax incentives for customers, aggressive national and state renewable portfolio standards weighted towards solar, and corporate tax breaks for manufacturing. Another major issue discussed was the importance of solar power storage at generation facilities, where significantly less emphasis is given in terms of the overall industry. Most companies are grinding away at small incremental percentage improvements in efficiency of solar cells, but less focus is given to enhancements in energy storage so that utilities may avoid having to build additional peak-usage offset plants with conventional, stable energy sources to compensate for intermittencies in higher percentages of required solar, and wind for that matter.

The sustainability aspect of the overall impact of incorporating solar energy into a green power portfolio was discussed in several presentations. Currently, the industry benchmark suggested by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) is that it takes approximately two years of solar power output to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of solar cells, down from 10 years in past decades.

A presentation by Chris Davey at EnviroMission focused on this company’s 100 percent green initiative for solar processing, which will require zero water, zero fossil fuels for backup power generation and zero carbon emissions, capable of being applied in remote desert regions of the country. Their solar power towers were quoted to generate a maximum power of 200 megawatts (MW) for 10 hours per day, once constructed in Arizona. Simply stated, their power generation system operates by using the sun’s radiation to heat a large body of air under an expansive collector zone, which is then forced by thermodynamic principles to move, as a hot wind passes through large turbines to generate electricity.

This company bases their business strategy and roadmap of zero water, utility-scale solar power, utilizing an innovative tower design, on a U.S. Department of Energy report entitled, “Reducing water consumption of concentrated solar power electricity generation,” stating that coal, nuclear, and heliostat (power tower) concentrating solar power (CSP) technology consume approximately 500 gallons of water per MWhr of power produced. EnviroMission’s Solar Tower project earmarked for Arizona is expected to abate the usage of about 528 million gallons of potable water per annum. Thus, their future product is a direct competitor with the growing CSP market.

Another interesting highlight of the Symposium was the presentation by SPG Solar, who proclaims to have been the first company to have successfully developed solar panels, which float on water, also known as “floatovoltaics.” This solar option is highly relevant to dense populated areas located on coasts or by major tributaries and lakes, which are considering off-shore wind sources such as the Northeast and Pacific Northwest.

Overall, Suntech grabbed the majority of media attention due to their agreement to build their first solar production facility (panel assembly) in the U.S. in Goodyear, Arizona, formally announced by Governor Jan Brewer during the luncheon session. The takeaway of the Symposium was that Arizona does have the potential to become the solar power capital of the U.S., at least based on the solar availability studies of NREL, but still has a long way to go in terms of energy policy, and business incentives, to lead in solar manufacturing as well. California still reigns supreme in both categories.

As a national renewable energy portfolio standard and cap-and-trade policies, to intensify clean energy demand, wane on President Obama’s priority list and as off-shore oil drilling, nuclear and clean coal have now been revitalized by his State of the Union address, which is a carrot for bi-partisanship, the overall energy market will be even more competitive amongst all options on the table.

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