California Solar-Equipment Company Sold for $76 Million
Tuesday, May 25th 2010 3:00 PM
By GetSolar Staff.
The solar panel arms race is heating up, and companies are doing whatever they can to gain the upper hand.
On Monday, news broke that a silicon-wafer company based in Santa Clara, California was being sold for $76 million. The company, Solaicx, manufactures silicon wafers for the solar industry. Its technology allows for low-cost production, and its wafers result in more-efficient solar cells.
Solaicx is being bought by solar-equipment giant MEMC Electronic Materials, which hopes to use Solaicx's technology to reduce the cost of silicon wafers. In some parts of the world, solar subsidies are being cut and solar-panel producers will have to lower their prices to remain competitive in the marketplace. Therefore, panel makers are looking to cut costs aggressively - and there should be a big market for Solaicx's low-cost monocrystalline silicon wafers.
"The monocrystalline silicon market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 50 percent during the next three years," MEMC Solar Materials president Ken Hannah noted at the time of the purchase announcement.
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The solar panel arms race is heating up, and companies are doing whatever they can to gain the upper hand.
