Solar-Energy Firm is Solar-Powered

By Dan Sullivan, arizona daily star

Global Solar Energy is practicing what it preaches with the inauguration this week of a new solar field that will partially power its Tucson plant.

The facility at 8500 S. Rita Road will use the solar power to make a lightweight film that, in turn, produces solar power.

The 750-kilowatt solar plant accounts for 25 percent of Global Solar’s energy needs.

Global Solar employs 180 people in Tucson and opened a Berlin production facility in November. The company plans to expand and create 40 jobs in 2009, said Mike Gering, Global Solar’s president and CEO.

The new solar field will generate 1.1 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy a year and offset 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide during its 25-year lifetime, a company report said.

The plant is the first commercial-scale development of Global Solar’s copper indium gallium diSelenide technology — a solar technology that looks and feels like a thin piece of film and is not hard like other solar technologies.

The solar plant is financed, owned and operated by MMA Renewable Ventures, a subsidiary of Municipal Mortgage & Equity. MMA Renewable Ventures is selling its energy to Global Solar under the terms of a long-term financial agreement.

Some of the financing for the project also came from Tucson Electric Power Company, which will buy the renewable energy credits generated by the plant.