SAN DIEGO -- California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) today marked the opening of a solar panel manufacturing plant, calling it an example of the Golden State's commitment to make clean energy.

Soitec, a France-based maker of semiconductor materials, invested $150 million into the 176,000-square-foot facility, which Brown and others at the event praised as a green economy success story. It will create 450 on-site and 1,000 indirect jobs.

"The building of this plant and the expansion of manufacturing," in California, Brown said, "is a direct result of the legislation requiring that one-third of our energy come from renewable sources by 2020."

California has one of the most aggressive green power mandates in the country with that standard Brown cited. The governor said he is confident the state would not only hit the mark but "do better than that."

The opening brought state and local officials, who shivered in strong gusts at the outdoor ceremony, and some joked that sun was a more pleasant renewable resources than wind.

Soitec's new plant -- located in an office park 30 minutes northeast of the city's downtown -- represents a win for those who have pushed for making the San Diego area a green energy hub (Greenwire, June 22).

Asked about the perils of promoting a solar plant opening following the bankruptcy of California-based panel maker Solyndra, Brown said that company's failure was part of the "creative destruction of capitalism."

"Some make it and some don't," Brown said. "Some Republicans in Congress have forgotten the notion of a [market] economy."

Soitec has not received a U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee, as Solyndra had, or any other federal funding. Brown, however, defended government support for some projects.

"Federal funding is all right," Brown said. "We use federal funding for transit, for building dams. Most of the stuff on Solyndra is partisan propaganda."

Brown declined to comment on the result if Congress does not extend a popular Treasury Department grant-in-lieu-of-tax-credit program for renewable power projects, which is set to expire at the end of the year.

New technology

Soitec decided to open the factory after earlier this year signing contracts with San Diego-based utility San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to build 155 megawatts of panes, enough to power 55,000 homes. Tenaska Solar Ventures, as part of a separate agreement with SDG&E, will use Soitec's Concentrix panels for a 150-MW project.

SDG&E has six projects that will use Soitec's panels, which the company and its supporters describe as an important advance in solar development (Greenwire, July 6).

Soitec's Concentrix CPV panel uses a technology known as concentrated photovoltaics, or CPV. Lenses on the surface focus sunlight onto solar cells while a tracking system shifts the panel every 10 seconds to always face the sun. The panels make two to three times as much electricity as a similar-sized conventional, the company has said.

"CPV technology has proven to be the most proficient and the most environmentally friendly technology," Soitec CEO Andre-Jacques Auberton-Herve said. There isn't a need for cooling water, he said, and the panels, because they turn, allow for animals or other land uses beneath the equipment.

The shifting panels produce power throughout the day compared with traditional photovoltaic panels that typically make their peak energy around noon, said Jim Avery, senior vice president of power supply for SDG&E. Concentrix panels can supply power at 4 p.m. when the utility's demand hits its high point, he said.

"That's critically important to us," Avery said.

Some analysts have said the technology Soitec uses has yet to secure a major foothold in the market.

"There are a lot of companies that have tried to do it, but no one has really broken through and been able to be a major producer," Ken Zweibel, director of the GW Solar Institute at George Washington University, said previously. It is not yet possible to determine whether the technology is a significant advancement, he said, because "nobody has enough data in the marketplace."