Vibrant Solar and its manufacturing partner, Helios Solar, are eyeing Pueblo and several other Southern Colorado cities as potential sites for a new, advanced solar panel factory.
Vibrant and Helios are allied by virtue of the fact that four of Helios’ owners are also Vibrant owners, and Vibrant is the only U.S. solar company authorized to sell and install Helios’ patented SunCubes (which are licensed exclusively through Helios in the U.S). These concentrating solar photovoltaic (CPV) modules, based on gallium arsenide technology, currently boast a 31-percent efficiency rating and expect to achieve even more efficiency in a few years.
The proposed plant, with its 468 workers, is expected to make a selection before April 1. Pueblo, with its proposed Colorado Energy Park – providing land for solar, nuclear and other energy technologies – seems like a logical choice.
The city is also a likely choice given its 6.0 rating for solar irradiance (on a domestic scale of 2.0 to 6.5) and its more than 300 days of sunshine per year – ratings that cause Pueblo resident Dr. Juan Trujillo – an advocate of the proposed Energy Park who reportedly introduced Vibrant Solar to the Pueblo market – to note that, while the factory remains Pueblo’s to acquire (by providing business incentives), it is also the city’s to lose.
Fowler, Colorado, is also reportedly in the running, according to Vibrant Vice President Mark Simmons, who has promised that Vibrant and Helios executives will review all proposals from all the cities in question. Whichever is chosen, the SunCube manufacturing plant will be an undeniable boon to the local economy.
Vibrant is the solar company responsible for the ongoing installation at Pueblo West-based Andrews Foodservice, an expandable array of 500 rooftop solar panels each measuring three feet by five feet which, when finally online, will provide almost one quarter of the electricity Andrews now gets from Black Hills Energy, whose generation mix is almost half coal.
For family-owned Andrews, the decision to install solar was a natural extension of the financial incentives available for commercial solar. In fact, co-owner George Andrews says that those rebates, combined with anticipated rising electricity rates, will insure that the solar system pays for itself in about four years.
The “green” aspect was admittedly a secondary advantage. In the future, however, as carbon trading and taxes change the face of American business, the reverse may be true.
Andrews, which employs about 100 people to package and deliver fresh food to schools, restaurants and prisons in a three-state area (Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming), will soon to become the proud owner of a 100-kilowatt solar array, the largest of its kind in Southern Colorado.
However, given Pueblo’s persistent sunshine and high level of solar radiation, it’s a record that likely won’t stand for long as solar developers discover this one prime spot in the “solar belt” where land prices make solar fields financially feasible.