By Hayley Ringle |Phoenix Business Journal
As Chinese solar panel manufacturer Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. shut down its Goodyear plant this week, the doors also are closing on what state officials hoped would be a new manufacturing base for the state.
Suntech is the last solar panel manufacturer to shutter its Arizona facility. Solon Corp. closed its Tucson panel-making operations in 2011, and Tempe-based First Solar Inc. indefinitely postponed manufacturing operations at its newly built Mesa plant, which opened last year. It is using part of the 1 million-square-foot facility for other purposes and looking to sublease the rest.
Despite the end of operations that had promised hundreds of jobs, the solar industry is growing as panel prices continue to decrease, and officials see a bright future in Arizona for the nascent technology.
The global solar industry will double from 2013 to 2016, according to Barry Broome, president and CEO of Greater Phoenix Economic Council.
“The global industry considers the U.S. market the best market in the world for solar because of the size of the market and the rate of which we consume energy,” he said. “I think solar will be a very viable and successful industry, especially in the state.”
The solar panel market has been hurt by a severe imbalance between supply and demand, solar executives and economic leaders say. Many companies ramped up manufacturing capacity from 2008 to 2010, when government subsidies for new energy sources were in full swing and many countries, particularly China, were trying to capitalize on the technology.
