ddl,
plant costs:
I recollect at building improvements ~$12M
plus machine costs including design ~$53M.
and this building has room for one more machine we have been told.
With 30,000,000 Watts output/year, far less than Stan's stated 1,000 miles/yr capacity, one could use 7 years of machine-life to come up with plant costs/PV-watt that are 31 cents/watt or $18.60 plant-costs/60 watt panel.
BTW, your "$218 plant cost/panel" for a 60W panel is more than Bekaert's guaranteed bid to the California Power Authority. Bekaert's bid was $3.35/W in 2002, $3.15/W in 2003, $2.90 in 2004 and $2.65 in 2005... and Bekaert presumably factored in the additional costs for labor, materials, plant utilities & on-site delivery to the buyer.
Just yesterday dwmeldrum posted an article on the new PV plant where the author wrote that the plant will be staffed, when up to full speed, with 90 workers:
detnews.com I emailed the reporter and he said this was the staff figure for three shifts, round-the-clock production. At nominal 30MW output, that is 333 kW output/worker and assuming $50k annual salary then labor costs are 15 cents/watt, excluding marketing/administration.
I'd be interested in any information on the ratio of production employees to PV watt output at other facilites but admittedly this facility, both in cell and module assembly, is now highly automated.
Al |
