Solexant plans 100-employee Oregon solar plant

A California company is seeking a $25 million state loan to build a massive solar manufacturing plant near Portland that could eventually reach 400 megawatts of module manufacturing capacity.

If so, the plant could rival the size of SolarWorld's Hillsboro plant, one of the crown jewels of the state's green businesses community.

San Jose-based Solexant Corp.’s loan request will be reviewed Tuesday by an advisory committee to the Oregon Department of Energy’s state Energy Loan Program.

If approved, it would be the largest loan in the program's roughly 30-year history.

The company plans to build the plant in stages. The first phase would have about 100 megawatts of module manufacturing capacity per year.

When the company first applied for the loan in November it listed an address in Fairview at 3256 NE 230th Ave. in which it would occupy an initial 126,000 square foot building. A news release from the state said the company is considering sites near Gresham, which could include Fairview, and near Wilsonville.

CEO Damoder Reddy said Thursday that the company has yet to select a final site for the plant, which will manufacture solar modules.

Solexant has also received pre-certification for a state Business Energy Tax Credit to cover half of a $37.5 million project cost.

Its technology increases solar cell efficiency while reducing manufacturing costs, according to the company’s website. Gartner highlighted Solexant as a "cool" up-and-coming solar technology vendor to keep an eye on in 2010.

Privately held Solexant is a four-year-old, venture-backed developer of what it refers to as “ultra-thin-film solar cells."

Gartner analyst James Hines said Solexant has an exclusive license to use a nanocrystal technology developed first developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California.

The company has raised $22.5 million in two investment rounds, according to the Gartner report, but remains in what it called “semi-stealth” mode and hasn’t provided details of its manufacturing process or module performance.

The report warns that an inability to execute has stymied other thin-film technology developers — but it also warns more traditional crystalline silicon and thin-film module manufacturers to watch out.

"If Solexant achieves its goals for installed system cost and capital efficiency, it could become a strong competitive threat," the report said.

The Gartner report also says Solexant’s manufacturing plant could grow to 800 megawatts.

Reddy declined to identify the size of any investment. He said the company would issue a news release in coming weeks.

By comparison, the Hillsboro plant operated by German panel-maker SolarWorld will grow to 500 megawatts of annual capacity by this fall, using a silicon-based technology.