SunPower

SunPower Corp.. is a U.S. publicly traded company that manufactures solar cells, photovoltaic systems plans, builds and operates.

Facts and Figures

SunPower was founded in 1985 in Silicon Valley by Dr. Richard Swanson to commercialize its technology he had developed as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University along with his students. SunPower is monocrystalline, the back contact solar cells with high efficiency ago ( module efficiency of up to 21.5 %).

History

In 2001, a solar-powered aircraft called Helios was built together with NASA, the wing consisted mainly of black solar panels.

In May 2002, the semiconductor specialist Cypress invested 8.8 million U.S. dollars, took over the majority of the companies in whose construction he was instrumental.

In 2005 the company built the solar park Bavaria, the then largest free-field photovoltaic plant in the world. SunPower is also operator of the plant.

On 10 January 2007, SunPower acquired PowerLight Corporation, the company, by then one of the market leaders in the planning and engineering of turnkey solar power plants.

In 2010, SunPower 's total assets of more than $ 900 million, with more than 1,500 dealers in eight countries and 5150 employees.

On January 2, 2011 SunPower had approximately 5150 employees worldwide. Including approximately 700 employees in the U.S., 4130 in the Philippines and 320 employees in other countries. Of these, approximately 3850 in the manufactory, 190 in the preparation and implementation of projects, 210 in research and development, 580 in marketing and 320 in administration.

5 August 2011 it was announced that SunPower new main and shirt sponsor of Bayer 04 Leverkusen is. The contract was prematurely dissolved the end of the 2012/13 season.

Share

The share is listed 30 Index since 2009 in the photovoltaic Global.

In April 2011, 60% of Sunpower shares by the French oil multinational Total acquired for about 960 million. It was this to be a friendly takeover. Through this acquisition, Total wants to promote its orientation to a multi-energy business further.

Conservation

Sunpower published in the early years no facts and figures on environmental protection and occupational safety. The issue of environmental protection has been emphasized only in connection with the environmentally friendly aspect of their products. Neither of the major areas of waste management and recycling, nor to the production paths of their own value chain or suppliers information was provided. Moreover, no evidence of an ISO 14001 certification for environmental management, occupational health and safety could be found.

Locations

Research and development carried out as before in San Jose ( California). Is produced in several plants. Production in the Philippines outside of Manila: Fab 1 in Laguna Techno Park ( closed in 2011 and lay off all employees or placed in the 100km distant Fab 2) Fab 2 in Batangas Production in Malaysia: There he produced several new lower-cost factories: http://www.auosunpower.com/ 2010 solar panels were produced in total with around 550 MWpeak. For a long time there was only a pilot production in the halls of Cypress Semiconductor, Round Rock (Texas ). SunPower has offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, including in Frankfurt and Singapore.