A big announcement was made this month for those excited by large scale solar projects; GEO (General Electric Co) the largest American conglomerate, said it has made a big push in solar power by investing $600 million to build a new factory. This is part of the Company’s aggressive building of its renewable energy portfolio, including Solar since 2007, and the CEO told investors in December that he believed it could be a $2 billion to $3 billion business for GE by 2015.

GEO over the last decade has made itself a leader in renewable energy, and that innovation continued today with the news it has designed a thin-film solar panel that converts sunlight to electricity more efficiently than rival products.

The move is likely to ramp up already intense price competition in America, particularly for First Solar Inc which uses the same thin-film technology as GE has focused on, whether that spills over into the international market remain to be seen…..

“Over time, there is going to be a lot of pricing pressure and the margins probably will not be what they are today,” said John Segrich, portfolio manager of the Gabelli SRI Green Fund. “Solar will be a very big market on a megawatt basis, but it’s a question of at what price?”

GE response is they are focused on driving prices down………”The biggest challenge today for the mainstream adoption of solar is cost, and the way you move cost is efficiency,” said Victor Abate, vice president of GE’s renewable energy unit. “We see ourselves continuing to push that.

GE, also a leading maker of wind- and natural gas-powered electric turbines, aims to open a U.S. factory in a yet-to-be-chosen location by 2013 that will employ 400 and produce enough solar panels each year to meet the needs of 80,000 homes.

The company also landed more than 100 megawatts of orders for solar thin-film products, which Abate said would generate “hundreds” of millions of dollars in revenue……

So it seems that solar is coming ahead in leaps and bounds as the No 1 Renewable Energy source, internationally as well as Australia, and there is no doubt that corporate investment on this massive scale will continue…….Premier Solar is proud to be one of the leaders in the large scale commercial arena in Australia, and will be investing heavily in very large scale solar energy parks over the coming 1-5 years.