EDITOR’S NOTE: Yesterday, Tesla (NASD:TSLA) announced that it has no intention of using Silevo’s technology at “Gigafactory 2,” the former Silevo facility in Western New York, now owned by Tesla through its acquisition of SolarCity. This makes some background on Panasonic (Whose technology Tesla plans to rely on instead) in this month’s Solar Flare particularly relevant.
Panasonic recently announced that the New York Facility would be operated under the name Panasonic Eco Solutions Solar New York America (PESSNYCA?) and that equipment will be installed and production will begin by summer 2017.
In 2014 SolarCity acquired Silevo and broke ground on its New York Giga-factory promising that it would begin high volume production as early as 2016. This was an announcement doomed to retraction from the outset given that breaking ground and construction are not synonymous.
In 2015 SolarCity announced that it would produce modules in its New York facility by 2017 that would be 30% more efficient than the modules it was currently producing even though it was not producing any modules at the New York facility and Silevo was operating as a module assembler in China. Also in 2015 SolarCity leased the former Solyndra manufacturing facility in Fremont a move that at least finally (finally) got rid of the Solyndra sign and the constant reminder of this fiasco.
In 2016 SolarCity announced that the champion modules produced in Fremont by Silevo had reached 22% conversion efficiency. Note, champion efficiency and commercial efficiency are not the same thing. Given the 2015 announcement that it would increase its nonexistent module efficiency by 30%, did SolarCity mean that in 2017 it would produce modules of >28% efficiency in New York using the Silevo technology? This is both unlikely and, well, it’s more than unlikely. And now SolarCity/Tesla and Panasonic have announced that Panasonic will produce high efficiency cells and modules in New York by mid-2017. This is also unlikely.
Well, it’s more than unlikely.
Comment: Panasonic’s cost structure is not a good fit for manufacturing in the US. Given the crash dive in prices and the forces holding prices down it is difficult to see the new announcement in a positive light.
Lesson: This latest announcement may end up to be no more than an announcement but it will be repeated as progress before PESSNYCA turns out even one module. The lesson is not to put too much credence in announcements or in long company names that cry out to be acronym-ized.
Paula Mints is founder of SPV Market Research, a classic solar market research practice focused on gathering data through primary research and providing analyses of the global solar industry. You can find her on Twitter @PaulaMints1 and read her blog here.
This article was originally published in SPV Reaserch’s monthly newsletter, the Solar Flare, and is republished with permission.
