This will be the largest photovoltaic plant, ever, in the US, that should reach full capacity (500MW/year) by 2009.

Purchased by Solarworld for about $50 million US, it's a "steal of a deal"!

Originally this plant, built by the Japanese Komatsu Group for about $1 billion US, was to produce chips for Intel (chipsets, flash or CPU's?). However due to Intel's products tanking in the marketplace in 2005 - 2006 the Komatsu Group decided to sell the plant to cut their losses.

SolarWorld AG plans to produce mono-crystalline solar silicon products at this plant in Hillsboro, Oregon. Panels should start trickling out in the summer of 2007.

NOTE: Single crystal or mono-crystalline wafers are more efficient (14% - 21%) than poly or multi-crystalline (13% - 19%??) solar cells.