News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

The automakers are joining forces with the blazing hot solar industry during this economic downturn and working to fill their manufacturing void by building solar equipment. Word from the relatively new solar energy venture, Skyline Solar appears to back this up as fact.

Skyline uses aluminum reflects focused sunlight at solar panels which augments the electricity generation said recently that a subsidiary of Magna international, Cosma International, will be making the metal parts required for Skyline’s Concentrated solar power units. Cosmos is a manufacturer of chassis parts and car bodies for GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda and numerous other auto manufacturers.

This is the second such agreement after Clairvoyant Energy, which is a new venture with designs to produce a thin film solar materials, and power storage business Xtreme Power Inc. publicized their arrangement to transform an unused Ford automotive factory into a renewable energy development park in Michigan.

These auto-solar agreements seem to be the new trend and include SunModular, who provide solar power unit components and say they will form an agreement with auto part suppliers who will churn out their companies goods. It seems that the auto sector facilities are a good fit for the growing solar trade according to Skyline CEO, Bob MacDonald. Skyline’s Units are eighteen feet by six feet in size so dimensions are close to the size of an automobile.

Auto manufacturers have a lot of experience constructing parts that are engineered from a larger template. That in comparison to manufacturers of computers and cell phones etc. In addition automobile builders have almost a one hundred year track record engineering metal forms and assembling components. They are design oriented, able to produce high yields and well able to control production costs, all crucial to a promising solar industry.

 There will certainly be some retooling required within the facilities to make these solar pieces but the production workers will not need to be retrained. Going in this direction was cost efficient rather than building their own production facilities from square one.

Cosma has started working on Skyline mechanisms out of a lead factory in Michigan with plans to start greater production volumes at another still to be determined facility in the following quarter, producing about one thousand systems. The combined energy generation capacity  of these new systems will be between twenty to thirty megawatts of solar per month.

 Automotive research companies have forecasted a plunge in car sales of 23.5 percent this year so the timing is excellent. Cosma and other companies have been looking to utilize their knowledge in production by working with other industries with growth possibilities and that included the renewable energy sector.