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“people are confused and our mission from day one in North America is to make solar systems affordable to middle class North Americans for consumers and commercial and industrial markets.”

The consortium aims to change that in Ontario and become the leading supplier of complete solar panel systems for MicroFIT and FIT markets.

“We want to have the supply chain in Ontario and meet the Feed-in Tariff local content requirements,” explains Ocean Yuan, president and CEO of Grape Solar, Eugene, OR, who created the idea of a consortium of manufacturers for the solar energy industry.

“We have already successfully organized a consortium from China that makes all the components on the panel. We have more than 30 manufacturers that make all the components involved in a solar panel system — solar cells, glass, cables, frames, back sheet, front sheet, etc. — and we organized them under the Grape Solar brand to venture into the U.S., and the consortium has been hugely successful.”

Now Yuan is bringing his idea into Ontario, where he says the supply chain for solar energy installations is “fragmented.” He says that “people are confused and our mission from day one in North America is to make solar systems affordable to middle class North Americans for consumers and commercial and industrial markets.”

According to Yuan, “The current problem in Ontario is that energy is expensive and installations are extremely slow due to a fragmented supply chain of companies offering different components and distributors who have little knowledge of the solar business. So we want to establish a supply chain of components and a well-trained installation segment that will allow us to install solar energy systems efficiently and cost effectively.”

The plan is to set up a manufacturing consortium that will begin operations at the beginning of 2011. The consortium will operate under the Grape Solar name and consist of manufacturers of solar panels, inverters, various racking systems, cables and other components.

Consortium partners include: Sungrow from China, the largest inverter manufacturer there; Patriot Solar, a manufacturer of ground-mounted systems and trackers, based in Michigan, USA; Wise Power, a manufacturer of rooftop racking systems for solar panels, based in Delaware, USA; and the list is growing, including Blackstone Solar, a Toronto firm that manufactures solar water heaters.

Angelo Lamanna, Director of Operations at Blackstone Solar, based in Toronto, is enthusiastic about the Consortium: “Grape Solar is one of the very few solar panel manufacturers that understands the challenges of Ontario FIT local content requirement. It is very exciting to see Grape Solar leading the consortium of manufacturers of panels, inverters and racking to meet the local content requirement.”

Ms. Feizhen Lu, CEO of Enersoon in Toronto, which is the joint venture partner of the Sungrow inverter company out of China, said: "We are pleased to participate in the group effort organized by Grape Solar to materialize localization. We are the biggest inverter manufacturer in China, but we just got started in Ontario. Instead of venturing into Ontario alone, this consortium concept really makes perfect sense; we can now leverage our strengths by combining our resources to act faster and more efficiently.”

Source: Business Wire