Oregon prepares to switch on SolarWorld factory in Hillsboro

[depakid]

Peek inside the largest solar factory in the Americas, which opens here Friday, and glimpse Oregon's new green-collar work force.

Many are survivors of the semiconductor industry, which produced the 480,000-square-foot plant that stood idle for years until Germany's SolarWorld renovated it to make solar crystals, wafers and cells.

Some are native Oregonians. Some are Californians who moved north to surf a new economic wave. Some come from as far as Peru and the former East Germany.

All 250 hired so far are scrambling to fire up the $440 million plant that, by 2011, is expected to produce material each year capable of generating 500 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power 80,000 U.S. homes or 280,000 German homes.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2008/10/oregon_prepares_to_switch_on_s_1.html

[gblady]

1. very cool...

I was amazed at the difference in how many US vs German homes it would power.....
boy, are we energy hogs!

[msongs]

2. wanna bet german houses are on the average much smaller than ours? In so cal they build huge palaces

that are way bigger than needed and now they are sitting there unsold like dinosaur remnants in sandstone.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[codjh9]

6. Yeah, that's a telling stat - '80,000 US homes or 280,000 German homes'

[NNadir]

3. I wonder if anyone will check on the organohalide content of the ground water in 5 years.

I am old enough to recall when the semiconductor industry in San Jose was being hailed as "green."

A decade later the groundwater was shown to be ruined forever in that area of the country.

We are about to find out the waste consequences of low energy/mass density. We should have found out about it from the last vast distributed energy scheme - the automobile - but in fact, as we see with the new depression, it's time to evoke Santayana's maxim about those who don't remember history being doomed to repeat it.

[depakid]

4. Oregon DEQ does a pretty fair job of monitoring the groundwater

It ain't San Jose.

http://www.deq.state.or.us/wq/pubs/factsheets/consumerinfo/wellownerspnwdata.pdf

[NNadir]

5. We'll see. Those organic halides will go somewhere.

It's not like they're going to quantum mechanically tunnel to the Andromeda galaxy.