Ralf Plieninger, Director of Business Management, Q-Cells
"Q" is for Quality. In this session, Mr. Plieninger will discuss Q-Cells' approach to delivering high-quality, high-performance products in a global manufacturing environment. Mr. Plieninger will show Q-Cells' experience and plans to transform silicon solar cell operations from low volume, engineering-centric production to Gigawatt scale manufacturing in a global environment. Mr. Plieninger will describe the overall approach to quality, and the specific aspects of combining this with the factory design challenges for very large scale solar cell production facilities. New production line concepts drive the need for much better process control, material tracking and inline inspection methods. He will reveal how the approach is linked also to other vertically integrated operations. Mr. Plieninger will review some of Q-Cells' key performance indicators, and how those metrics have improved through the implementation of a complete quality focus.
Karim Lokas, Vice President, Camstar
Jody Cowan, Managing Director, Strategy22
Practical steps for a leap to grid parity. In this session, Mr. Lokas and Mr. Cowan will define a maturity model for Solar manufacturing, and provide a series of short case studies on how the approach has impacted key performance metrics of solar manufacturers. They will also present the implications for the Solar Industry as a whole, and the trends expected in the solar value chain as the infrastructure matures and information is made more widely transparent. Some of the key areas covered in the presentation are:
Robert Gallegos, Engineering Manager, Solar Array, Emcore
For Emcore, building solar cells for powering satellites, as well as high-efficiency triple-junction solar cells for concentrated solar power applications, requires top Quality and Reliability. For over 20 years Emcore has been at the heart of innovation in Solar, and has matured its operations using best practices for the solar and other industries. In today's highly innovative Solar industry, R&D and Production are a concurrent state. Mr. Gallegos will provide insight into how continuous improvements in R&D are transformed into profitable production. He will detail the initiatives and methodologies that support business growth, as well as his vision of the ideal process and infrastructure for rapid innovation with high quality.
Didier Chavet, JAPAC Operations, IT Sr. Director, SanDisk
Didier Chavet joins us from SanDisk, the world's leading supplier of innovative flash memory data storage products. Mr. Chavet is a visionary in charting the company's path forward in quality. He spearheaded SanDisk's adoption of a closed-loop approach to quality, which created a seamless information infrastructure that is moving his organization beyond the basic state-of-the-art manufacturing execution platform to one with built-in quality management and operational intelligence. In this session, he will share his experience from the semiconductor industry, and detail specific approaches for consideration in Solar.
Jigar Shah, CEO, Carbon War Room and Founder, SunEdison
A renowned visionary committed to renewable energy, Jigar Shah launched SunEdison in 2003 based upon a business plan he developed in 1999 for a university class. That plan became the basis of the SunEdison business model: Simplify solar as a service. This model changed the status quo, allowing organizations to purchase solar energy services under long-term predictably priced contracts and avoid the significant capital costs of ownership and operation of solar energy systems. Under Shah's guidance, SunEdison pioneered the solar power services agreement (SPSA) model, which has turned solar services into a multi-billion dollar industry. SunEdison now has more solar energy systems and megawatts under management than any other company.
Shah is an expert on energy project finance, changing energy policy, working with entrenched stakeholders, convincing different type of customers to embrace energy technology. Today, Shah works closely with some of the world's leading influencers and guides policy makers around the globe on key issues surrounding renewable energy, global warming and sustainability. Shah holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MBA from The University of Maryland. He sits on the boards of the Prometheus Institute and Greenpeace USA.
Panelists: Robert Gallegos, Emcore; Helen Milani, Solaria; Ralf Plieninger, Q-Cells and Amiya Ranjan, MiaSolé
The Summit concludes with an interactive panel session that will include the day's speakers as well as other guests from leading innovators in the solar industry. The panel topics will include panelists' outlook on the industry, trends in quality and production, operational challenges and approaches, and overall perspectives on grid parity and the future of Solar Power.