Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. a manufacturer of photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules, announced the opening of its headquarters in San Francisco. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Suntech’s Chairman and CEO, Dr. Zhengrong Shi, officially opened the new headquarters office at a press conference.
’’The establishment of Suntech’s U.S. base in San Francisco reflects the growing importance of the solar industry in San Francisco and a long-standing commitment of the city to encourage investment in renewable energy,’’ said Mayor Newsom.
Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Suntech’s Chairman and CEO, commented, ’’We are very pleased to locate our U.S. headquarters in San Francisco and thank Mayor Newsom and his team for their support. As we conducted our search for this site throughout the U.S., we were particularly impressed by the awareness of climate change issues, the quality and sophistication of the customers and partners and the high level of talent within the San Francisco Bay Area and California. In addition, we were very impressed with the progressiveness of various Bay Area city governments as demonstrated by San Francisco and Oakland with various public-private partnership initiatives to foster renewable energy. We hope to participate more meaningfully within the community in broader initiatives such as these.’’
’’We have already built a strong sales team across the U.S. that has expanded sales nearly sixfold between 2006 and this year,’’ continued Dr. Shi. ’’In direct response to customer and partner feedback, we have created a U.S. based team at this new headquarters to provide a diverse range of capabilities to both supplement our sales efforts and accelerate our U.S. business development initiatives. This expansion is also founded on our belief that the U.S. will become the largest solar market globally in coming years. In many ways, California has led that initiative having among the longest histories of PV system adoption and most recently demonstrated by the $3.3 billion California Solar Initiative.’’
San Francisco is also the site of two of Suntech’s key projects in the U.S. Together with its San Francisco-based partner Bass Electric, Suntech recently completed a 500kW solar system at the San Francisco International Airport. In addition, Suntech collaborated with California-based Open Energy Corp. to provide a glass-on-glass building integrated PV (BIPV) solar system at the California Academy of Science which the company claims demonstrates growing traction for it’s BIPV products in the U.S. Suntech also has partnered with Bay Area company, Akeena Solar, Inc. to produce its patent- pending high performance solar panel systems.
