General Electric (GE) announced the intention to build a 400MW solar power plant by investing $600m for its presence in the growing solar energy market.
They will use the most efficient solar cell on the market, developed by PrimeStar made by cadmium telluride. This kind of solar cell was independently certified as most able of converting sunlight to electricity. To manufacture the solar panels GE expect to employ 400 people and to produce an equivalent of 400MW of solar panels in a year.
GE also confirmed new commercial deals for solar panels for NexEra Energy or GE Brilliance inverters to Chicago based Invenergy. A sort of 30MW of solar panels produced by PrimeStar and manufactured in Colorado was measured by the National Renewable Energy Lab as delivering 12.8 per cent aperture area energy efficiency. An official of GE’s renewable energy business said that: “This panel surpasses all previously published records for CdTe thin film, which is the most affordable solar technology in the industry”.
The vice president of General Electric’s renewable energy business, Mr. Victor Abate, said that solar panels are the next step in the company’s renewable energy strategy. He said that: “We are addressing the biggest barrier for the mainstream adoption of solar technology – cost – and the NREL certification proves that we are on track to deliver the most affordable solutions for our customers.”
According to Mr. Abate: “Our plan to open a US solar manufacturing facility further demonstrates our confidence in this technology and is just the first phase in a global, multi-Giga Watt roadmap. We’re not only excited by the efficiency milestone, but by the speed at which our team was able to achieve it and the innovation runway for future improvements in this technology.”
The director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at NREL, Mr. Ryne Raffaelle, said that the technological milestone of delivering commercially viable solar panels with high energy efficiency was the widespread acceptation of solar power. “It’s great to see technology that started at NREL ready to move into the market”.
