Renewable energy company SPI Energy Co. Ltd. anticipates tripling its employee count as it expands its solar panel manufacturing plant in Sacramento.
Denton Peng, CEO of SPI (Nasdaq: SPI), told the Business Journal that California is the largest U.S. market for solar, and he anticipates that will continue for years.
“We think solar will be more and more in demand,” Peng said.
The demand for more solar panels is strong, and when the price per solar panel decreases, it will make them even more popular, he said. Peng and SPI's key managers have been manufacturing solar panels for more than 20 years, he said.
The company has a 140,000-square-foot manufacturing space at McClellan Park, which is also the company's headquarters, since its recent move from Santa Clara.
“We will probably have to add more space in the future,” Peng said.
The McClellan operation has about 30 employees now. It will be ramping up to 100 or 115 employees by the end of the year, Peng said.
The Sacramento solar panel factory currently has about a 200-megawatt manufacturing capacity if it were running at full tilt, which it isn’t yet, said Randy Conone, senior vice president of SPI and chief financial officer of SolarJuice, SPI’s residential solar installation subsidiary.
SPI plans to increase production capacity to 1.1 gigawatts of panel production by the end of the year. A capacity of 1.1 gigawatts represents around 3 million panels annually.
SPI is bringing more state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment from all over the world, Conone said.
The company is now running testing and quality control operations, as well as some limited production, as it brings in new manufacturing equipment, which will likely continue through the fourth quarter, he said.
The Sacramento factory’s output will likely primarily be used for residential solar installations, Conone said.
SolarJuice last year bought the customer lists from what was previously one of the country’s largest solar installers, PetersenDean Inc. and Solar4America, which declared bankruptcy in 2020.
SPI Energy has three primary divisions, including its SolarJuice residential solar operation, a commercial and utility solar operation and EdisonFuture/Phoenix Motor, a division that makes electric trucks and cars in Southern California. Peng said the company may consider bringing some of the transportation operation to Sacramento in the future.
SPI started in Roseville in 2006 as Solar Power Inc., manufacturing solar panels in China and installing solar-power systems in the United States, Europe and Asia. That company was majority bought out by a Chinese company in 2011, which moved the headquarters to the Bay Area. SPI Energy took over the rest of SPI in 2016.
