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Local solar firms confident

01.01.70

A year after a U.S. senator said northwest Ohio's solar-panel industry was helping the state to become known as "the Silicon Valley of clean energy," industry experts predict the global industry will undergo a major shakeout that will break all but a handful of solar panel producers worldwide.

The bold forecast raises questions about the future of the Toledo area's three panel makers, with one more coming next year.

Each of the firms with local operations -- First Solar Inc., Xunlight Corp., Willard & Kelsey Group LLC, and, building a plant in Napoleon, Isofoton North America -- contends it makes a particular type of panel that is in demand and is competitively priced, so it will survive any industry consolidation.

The chief executive of China's Trina Solar Ltd., the world's fifth-largest solar panel maker, predicted recently that by 2015 two-thirds of the industry's solar-related companies will face mergers, acquisitions, or bankruptcy.

And by 2020, Jifan Gao said, just 15 solar firms will be left -- five each in of three major segments: photovoltaic (solar) panels, solar energy-absorbing wafers and ingots, and production of raw materials such as polysilicon, the most commonly used material in solar panel manufacturing.

Source: Toledo Blade