Even though the “modern” solar power manufacturing and marketing sector has been around for 30-40 years, it is still considered a new business development area. Today’s technologies, involved in generating power from the sun, bear little resemblance to those of the 1970’s. Today’s solar power systems have taken technology to the next step, offering increased efficiencies and shorter payback time.
The companies participating in these leaps forward, however, are still in their business infancy. They have the technology, product base and knowhow but lack that little extra to find the next level. There are several companies that have made the leap to a large corporate structure, but many more remain as smaller concerns mired in the everyday world of generating revenue. As a company reaches a certain point, however, it can make the leap to a more solid and stable concern with several sources of revenue, if it approaches the task correctly. An investor that finds and invests in such a company is an investor that may find solid profits over the longer term.
Evergreen Solar Inc., a developer, manufacturer and marketer of solar panels, works to offer lower cost, faster payback solar panel systems to residential and commercial customers. The first half of October has found the company introducing its latest, most environmental friendly, string-ribbon solar panel product to the marketplace and the signing of a licensing agreement for the company’s proprietary Quad furnace technology.
In a general sense, the company has moved past the “gee-whiz” stage of solar panel development and manufacturing. It is instead working on the realities of running a one-stop solar panel manufacturing and marketing business. To this end, the company has developed a proprietary wafer manufacturing process that creates less silicon wafer waste (reducing raw material costs), a shipping system that uses less cardboard packaging, and features that make on-site installation a snap (literally and figuratively.) The company has also achieved UL ratings and efficiencies that best all other wafer designs.
It is perhaps the company’s development programs that are making the company look more attractive, past its solid solar products. On October 7, 2008, the company updated, finalized and superseded a memorandum of understanding to bring about a licensing agreement with EverQ GmbH. The licensing agreement involves the use of the company’s proprietary Quad furnace wafer equipment while maintaining a supply agreement that gives it a solid sourcing partner.
From a practical point of view, the company has built a better mouse trap from both a business and environmental perspective and is now working to leverage aspects of it toward multiple streams of revenue generation. In most respects, this would appear as a sign that the company is passing from one level of company development into another and is working to profit significantly now and well into the future.
Let us hear your thoughts below:
