After four years of raising capital and developing prototypes, Monrovia-based Soliant Energy is opening its pilot solar-panel manufacturing facility this week.
The 15,000-square-foot facility, next door to its headquarters, will have the capacity to produce up to 2,700 panels in the first year. That will help to nearly double its number of employees with 25 to 40 new jobs on the horizon, said Michael Deck, chief financial officer for Soliant.
Soliant designs self-guided, motorized solar panels that tilt toward the sun. The tilting feature will allow the panels to capture up to 80 percent more energy than most other panels that traditionally lie relatively flat on rooftops.
The company targets commercial rooftops. To equip a 15,000-square-foot facility, for example, the solar panels and installation would cost about $600,000 total, Deck said.
“Unlike other specialized concentrating photovoltaic systems, commonly used by utility companies to get solar power, we make devices that are the same size as traditional solar panels that are easy to install on rooftops,” Deck said. “That allows clients to be powered through energy most of the day from the sun and cut costs on their utility bills.”
Soliant Energy, founded in Pasadena by former Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees, has been funded by a variety of investors in energy and renewable technology, including Trinity Ventures, Nth Power, Rockport Capital and Rincon Venture Partners.
The plant’s opening is a sunny development for both the emerging alternative energy market and the shrinking manufacturing sector in Los Angeles, which overall has seen layoffs and closures with the economic downturn. The company is looking at options locally and nationwide for setting up its permanent manufacturing facility.
“This is our first production facility and we’re doing it on a smaller scale as we look where to go next, a decision we’ll make in the next six to nine months,” Deck said. “But we love it here in Southern California and would like to stay.”
Local C-17 Marketing
In its quest to save the C-17 cargo plane assembled in Long Beach from ending production, Boeing Co. is turning to the pages of local media.
The defense contractor has taken out full-page ads in four publications: the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Business Journal, Long Beach Business Journal and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
“We’re focusing the campaign only in the region to get people to understand that this affects them,” said Boeing spokesman Jerry Drelling.
“If the line closes, we all lose,” the ad states in bold type and lists the estimated job losses in the region – 13,857 – if production stops. The ad urges readers to support the program, which is on the government’s chopping block.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in April that the government no longer needs to order more planes. That would mean production in Long Beach would end in July 2011.
So far, lawmakers have only allocated funds for three C-17s, but Boeing said it would need at least 15 orders for the company to make it cost-effective.
Last week, U.S. Sens. Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer and Kit Bond issued a joint statement calling for the funding of 12 additional C-17 aircraft in next year’s Defense Appropriations Bill.
Meanwhile, the unions have gotten involved. Last week, labor leaders, lawmakers representing the area, Boeing employees and local business owners held a rally near the assembly plant in Long Beach.
The defense spending bill is expected to be finalized in October, so Drelling said the next few weeks will be spent on shoring up public support for the program through tactics such as the ad campaign.
Lasers on the Water
A high-energy laser under development by a division of Northrop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach may become the weapon in defending the U.S. Navy against suicide attacks by fleets of small boats.
One of the foremost threats to Navy ships is not the conventional enemy battleship, but a swarm of small boats rigged with explosives and piloted by suicide commandos. So the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., has awarded Northrop a $98 million contract for laser defense technology.
Under the contract, Northrop must demonstrate ability to create a successful marine-environment laser weapon system by the end of 2010.
Staff reporter Francisco Vara-Orta can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 241.
