SunPower Founder Dick Swanson Speaks To Solar’s Future

Posted by EcoFriendly

Apr 25

SunPower Founder Dick Swanson Speaks To Solar’s Future
Silicon Valley reveres its pioneers. And in the solar industry, Dick Swanson, the founder and president of San Jose-based SunPower, is a true technology legend.

As an electrical engineering student and then a professor at Stanford, Swanson was intrigued by the potential of solar power, which was primarily being used on satellites and in space research. He was one of the first to delve into solar’s “terrestrial” applications. Solar presented a perfect engineering challenge: It was scientifically proven, but wasn’t cost-effective to produce.

He founded SunPower on April 24, 1985, and the small company lived on research grants and small projects until a meeting with T.J. Rodgers led to a $150 million investment by Cypress Semiconductor in 2002. That changed everything, and Cypress’ support came as the idea of putting solar on rooftops began to take off. SunPower, which went public in 2005, designs and manufactures high-efficiency solar cells, solar panels and solar systems for residential, commercial and utility clients in the United States and around the world.

SunPower’s solar systems can be seen on the roof of the Tech Museum in San Jose, at Agilent’s Santa Clara headquarters and at the UC Merced campus. But like many solar companies, SunPower is increasingly working with utility clients on large-scale solar-generating projects and recently completed the 25-megawatt DeSoto power plant for Florida Power & Light, the largest operating solar power plant in the country.

The company had $1.5 billion in revenue in 2009, and this week announced it will locate its first domestic manufacturing facility in Milpitas. Swanson sat down recently at the company’s San Jose headquarters to discuss SunPower’s history.

Q “Efficiency” refers to the amount of sunlight that is converted into electricity, and SunPower’s solar cells, which have a minimum efficiency of 22 percent, are the highest-efficiency solar cells on the market today. Why is efficiency so important? Isn’t cost a more critical factor?

A When you are putting solar on a rooftop you have limited space. There are chimneys, dormers, shading from neighboring buildings, trees. Solar is what’s known as an “area-constrained application.” So if you have limited space, you want to maximize the ability of the solar cells to generate electricity.
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