The City Council is set to decide on incentives Tuesday to help lure the company, GlobalWatt, which also is considering sites in several other states. The council will hear a presentation in closed session before deciding in public.
In April, the city’s Business and Job Development Corp., also known as the 4A board, recommended $2.8 million in incentives over five years.
The $189 million plant is expected to create 400 full-time jobs with an average salary just less than $47,000 within several years, and 50 part-time jobs. The incentives are contingent on hiring all 400 full-time positions, which will include managers and supervisors, administrative positions, technicians, warehouse and stock workers and line operators.
“We see Texas in a rapid growth stage for solar implementation in the next few years, and we are here to make Corpus Christi the epicenter of the solar growth in Texas,” Yogesh Rane, the company’s director of emerging markets, said in an e-mail.
The company won’t disclose the other potential sites or details of negotiations. Their decision also depends on a state tax incentive package.
The company has worked for a year to select a site and hopes to produce its first solar panels about six months after choosing a city. It expects to make a decision within two months.
Corpus Christi is enticing because of its port, railroads and interstate highway connections with Mexico and Canada, Rane said.
This would be the first plant for GlobalWatt, a San Jose, Calif., company that ultimately wants to build several factories. The plants would produce solar panels, or assemblies of solar cells, that can produce 3 watts to 300 watts of power each, depending on a customer’s needs.
In one year, each manufacturing line could produce enough solar panels to generate 30 megawatts, Rane said. Each facility will start with one manufacturing line, with a goal to expand to five lines, for 150 megawatts of solar panels.
Typical household incandescent light bulbs are 60 to 100 watts. A megawatt, or 1 million watts, can provide enough power for 300 to 400 homes in Texas at any given moment.
GlobalWatt plans to focus on large customers with applications including residential or commercial rooftop installations, mobile power for agriculture and large solar arrays to generate electricity on or off the grid.
The company was formed in 2006 from a group of solar industry veterans with a focus on local communities rather than on overseas manufacturing, Rane said.
To that end, the company announced plans last month to partner with Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi for a research-and-development program in thin-film solar cells.
GlobalWatt also worked with local investors.
Rick Patel, who owns several area hotels, said he met Rane at a wedding and decided to invest in the company.
“I liked his idea,” Patel said. “It was something fresh, something that not too many people are concentrating on because most people think it’s too expensive to do solar panels. But clearly, we’ve got to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
Patel said the plant would benefit the local economy with jobs and research opportunities, but he’s also looking for some relief from electricity prices.
“I have quite a few hotels in town,” he said. “I wish somebody would come up with something that would help with my electric bills, because that’s one of the largest bills.”
Ultimately, GlobalWatt envisions a Corpus Christi solar park, or a renewable energy solar park that would include several businesses that can work together. A site hasn’t been determined.
“GlobalWatt intends to be an enabler in the project by becoming the first to occupy the site,” Rane said. “But then it will be up to the owner/developer to determine how quickly they would like to expand, and what incentives can be offered to other green energy companies to locate in Corpus Christi.”
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