The Michigan Economic Development Corporation once estimated the GlobalWatt facility could have generated a total of 2,768 direct and indirect jobs by 2016 - a far different number than the dozen-plus who actually ended up working shifts. The development agency has been under fire for several other wildly high estimates on projects that did not turn out.
Michigan was very excited about GlobalWatt’s promises of a $177 million plant. “In fact, GlobalWatt literally left Silicon Valley in California to set up shop in an abandoned auto plant in Saginaw” enthused [then] Governor Jennifer Granholm in her state of the state address. The town newspaper wrote of Saginaw’s “solar flair.”
Employees polish a solar panel in Freiberg, Germany. German panel makers are struggling as demand is falling and competition from Asia is rising. Added capacity at Chinese manufacturers has resulted in price declines. Photographer: Jochen Eckel/Bloomberg
GlobalWatt CEO Sanjeev Chitre blamed the shutdown on the poor economy and competition from overseas; however, many critics are wondering if there really was much of a factory to shut down. Far from a mega-factory promised in early paperwork, GlobalWatt’s Saginaw operations actually employed slightly more than a dozen workers.
“We did not get a single cent from the city of Saginaw or the state of Michigan,” said GlobalWatt CEO Sanjeev Chitre. He defended the small size of the plant in Saginaw, saying “at least a thousand” solar panels were built before the shutdown. Chitre said the company no longer needed the massive facility as the American solar industry faced low-cost competitors in China and Europe. “We were paying between five and seven thousand on electricity every month for the large facility,” Chitre said.
Xinyu-based LDK supplied Sunways with wafers, a silicon-
based material that’s cut into cells. The companies agreed to
terminate the long-term supply contract, they said. Sunways will
make a final payment to LDK in “the lower double-digit million
range,” they said.