Adding energy storage reflects the evolution of the company, which started off as a solar cell and panel maker before it entered the power plant development business. SunPower has carried out pilot energy storage projects in recent years and worked with different energy storage technologies, including advanced lead acid and zinc bromide batteries.

But lithium-ion batteries “will likely be the first technology to have an impact,” said Jack Peurach, executive vice president of products. The emergence of electric cars plays a role in making lithium-ion battery the front runner for being paired with solar, he added.

SunPower & Flextronics Factory in Milpitas, CA

SunPower executives didn’t provide details, such as the timing and battery suppliers, for its energy storage plans. But the discussion puts SunPower on a growing roster of solar energy companies that are offering or plan to offer energy storage.

SolarCity, for example,  has been bundling lithium-ion batteries from Tesla Motors with its solar energy systems and applying for a California program that subsidizes energy storage installations. One Roof Energy is working with battery maker Silent Power to roll out products. Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, which runs a solar panel manufacturing subsidiary, is an investor in both OneRoof and Silent Power. SunEdison has done a pilot project with a battery system from startup Seeo.

Energy storage will be part of SunPower’s plan to expand its reach in the commercial and residential market, where it sells power purchase agreements or leases via its dealers or its own project development business. The company designs the power purchase agreements for its commercial and government customers and leases for homeowners. Power purchase agreements and leases work in similar ways: business or home owners sign a long-term contract of up to 20 years and pay a monthly fee for the solar electricity from the SunPower solar energy systems on their rooftops.

SunPower’s foray into the energy storage business will prompt more comparison with SolarCity, which started in 2006 as purely a solar installer. SolarCity is most active in the residential and commercial markets, but it scored the first utility project last year. As a result, the two companies have been competing more intensely in recent years.

In fact, a lawsuit filed by SunPower against SolarCity and five people last year highlighted that rivalry. The lawsuit accused five former SunPower employees of stealing confidential data and brought the data with them when they went to work for SolarCity. The two companies settled on Dec. 31, 2012, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit in January, SolarCity said in its 2012 annual report. It didn’t disclose the amount of the settlement.

SunPower executives didn’t say whether they will sell energy storage in the United States first or in other regions. Werner said that, for now, energy storage makes financial sense only in markets that offers government incentives. That would include California, Germany and Japan.

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The announcement came after SunPower executives said last week that demand in the hot Japanese market exceeded what the company could deliver during the first quarter. Last month, market research firm IHS reported that the average wholesale prices for silicon panels delivered to Europe rose for the first time in several years.

The shift has come at a heavy cost to solar manufacturers like First Solar and SunPower, however. For over two years, solar panel makers have had to reduce production or even shutter factories while posting losses quarter after quarter. Dozens have filed for bankruptcy, including Germany’s Alfasolar, as reported by PV Magazine Monday. The bankruptcy of Suntech Power’s main subsidiary in March rattled the industry, particularly those who have bought the Chinese company’s solar panels.

First Solar, which makes solar panels and develops solar power plants, closed its big manufacturing plant in Germany last year and suspended plans to build new factories in Vietnam and Arizona. Those moves as well as First Solar’s efforts to reduce its spending on administration and, to a lesser extent, research development and sales, have allowed the company to survive the downturn. First Solar brought in new top executives over the past year and presented a convincing plan last month for improving its technology and sales in emerging markets for the next several years.

For the past three years, First Solar’s executives have discussed in earnest the need to grab market share in emerging markets such as India, China, the Middle East and Latin America. Germany was once its largest market, but the country, which has steadily reduced its government incentives for solar energy generation, accounted for just three percent of its sales in 2012, according to First Solar’s 2012 annual report.

In an earnings discussion with analysts on Monday, First Solar’s CEO Jim Hughes pointed out that the company has expanded its market reach since early 2012. Back then, it was talking mostly about sales in the United States, Canada, India, Europe and Australia. Its purchase of a Chilean solar power developer earlier this year created a new talking point about Latin America. The Chilean company was developing about 1.5 GW of projects when First Solar announced the acquisition. Overall, First Solar is working on about 1.8 GW of projects in Latin America, though those projects are under development and the company isn’t promising that all of them will succeed.

Hughes also announced that the company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia for the second phase of a 2GW plan that it first announced in 2009. The second phase will see First Solar supplying 300 MW-500 MW of solar panels, and construction could start in the second half of 2014. The first phase, a 30MW project, is set to start construction in the third quarter of this year, he added.

Meanwhile, the company is building some of the world’s largest solar power plants right here in California. One of them, the 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One in Los Angeles County, has run into “weather-related delays” during the first quarter of this year. That partly contributed to lower earnings from the previous quarter. Completion of the project is now set for the end of this year rather than the second quarter.

The company generated $755 million in sales for the first quarter of this year, down $320 million from the previous quarter but up $258 million from the year-ago period. It posted $59.1 million in net income, or $0.66 per share for the first quarter, $154.2 million in net income, or $1.74 per share for the fourth quarter of 2012. It reported $449.4 million, or $5.20 per share, in losses for the first quarter of 2012.

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“Our residential lease business remains strong, with demand outstripping our financial capacity in the first quarter,” said Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, during a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.

The Silicon Valley company signed over 2,100 leases during the first quarter, bringing the cumulative total to over 16,200. SunPower launched the lease program in 2011. The lease sign up rate is roughly the same as in 2012, during which it signed up 11,415 of them through its network of dealers, or roughly 2,800 of them per quarter.

Homeowners who sign leases, which run 20 years, pay a monthly fee for using the solar electricity from the solar panels installed on their rooftops. They don’t own the equipment and aren’t responsible for its maintenance or repairs. SunPower raises money from investors to finance the leases. The investors, which include banks and companies such as Google, put up the money partly to take advantage of a federal tax credit that amounts to 30 percent of the price of all the solar energy system installed using their funds.

Since the lease business is fairly new, it hasn’t been making a big impact on SunPower’s financial performance though. The company’s shares shot up 17 percent after its earnings announcement mainly because it delivered better financial results than expected.

The company generated $635.4 million in revenue for the first quarter, up 29 percent from the $494.1 million for the first quarter in 2012. It narrowed its losses to $54.7 million , or $0.46 per share, from $74.5 million, or $0.67 per share, year over year.

SunPower makes solar panels and develops power plants. It’s building two huge projects in California.  It has installed over 90 percent of the solar panels for the 250MW power plant called California Valley Solar Ranch, which is owned by NRG Solar. It recently started building two projects totaling 579MW that their owner, MidAmerican Solar, called Antelope Valley Solar Projects.

Internationally, SunPower continues to do well in Japan, a hot market that began offering fat incentives for solar energy generation after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011. Through mostly Toshiba and a little through Sharp, SunPower’s seeing more demand for its solar panels in Japan than it had anticipated, Werner said. Sales volumes doubled from 2011 to 2012 and could double again in 2013, said Howard Wenger, the company’s head of global sales and development.

Most of the company’s solar panels are going to residential rooftops in Japan. Living space tends to be small (and more efficiently used) in Japan than it’s the case in the United States, so SunPower’s highly efficient solar panels are a good fit, its executives said. Its silicon solar panels can convert about 21 percent of the sunlight into electricity, higher than other silicon solar panels on the market today. Silicon solar panels accounted for 89 percent of the solar panels made in 2012, according to GTM Research.

SunPower has had to cut production and costs in the past two years as the global solar market saw a pricing collapse from an oversupply of solar panels.

The average wholesale prices worldwide fell 50 percent from 2011 to 2012 while demand for them grew only 5 percent during 2012, said NPD SolarBuzz. Dozens of solar panel makers around the world have filed for bankruptcy.

SunPower executives said they have beaten their cost-cutting goals.

“It’s brutal to be exclusively a module manufacturer,” Werner said. “As you look at SunPower, we moved from modules originally to systems a few years ago, and what we sell today is energy in the form of leases or PPA (power purchase agreements).”

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Verizon plans to buy fuel cells from ClearEdge Power and solar panels from SunPower. The amount of power from the solar panels and fuel cells, which will be installed across seven states, will be 70 million kilowatt hours of electricity. That’s enough to power 6,000 homes per year.

Fuel cells look like industrial refrigerators, and they use a chemical reaction to produce electricity and heat. They are filled with large stacks that are lined with catalysts (a metal, sometimes platinum), and a fuel (commonly natural gas) is inserted in one side and runs over the stack. Electricity and heat flow out the other side. The benefits of fuel cells are that the electricity can be created on site where it is used, and if the fuel used is biogas, then the electricity is also free of carbon emissions.

Verizon has been using a small amount of solar and fuel cell technology for awhile, but this move represents the company’s largest commitment to clean power projects to date. Verizon is looking to cut its carbon emissions footprint substantially by 2020.

Gowen told me in an interview that this initiative is being driven both by the desire to add energy resiliency to Verizon’s facilities as well as the company’s sustainability goals. During superstorm Sandy, a fuel cell installation that Verizon had in Long Island that powered a switching station (using fuel cells from UTC Power, which was acquired by ClearEdge Power) never went down. Gowen said he wanted that type of off-grid resiliency through out Verizon’s facilities.

All of the solar panel installations in 2013 will be pretty large ones. For example, Verizon is putting solar panels on the roof of a data center in New Jersey, as well as on the ground next to the data center. The return on investment for the combined clean power projects is supposed to be around ten years, said Gowen.

Deploying clean power technologies — both solar panels and fuel cells — at data centers is a growing trend for internet and telecom companies in the U.S. Apple (a AAPL), Google, eBay, and Microsoft are all deploying clean power at data centers to help add off grid resiliency, as well as lower carbon emissions.

Apple is building its own solar panel farms and fuel cell farms at its data center in Maiden, North Carolina. Google has spent over a $1 billion investing in clean power projects and recently started working with Duke Energy on a clean power initiative in North Carolina. AT&T has large fuel cell farms powering its operations in California and Connecticut, using technology from Bloom Energy.

In a call last week, ClearEdge Power’s CEO David Wright called Verizon’s commitment to clean power technology “a stake in the ground for other technology companies.”

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The Arizona-based thin film solar giant announced the pending acquisition on Tuesday during its analyst day — its first since 2009 — in which it laid out a persuasive technology and business development plan for the next five years. Investors liked what they heard and pushed the company’s stock up by nearly 50 percent during trading.

Courtesy of Southern California Edison

The announcement also came after the company’s top executives spent the entire day taking shots at silicon solar technology, which they said hasn’t been able to make a big leap in its sunlight-to-electricity conversion rate for years and is approaching the theoretical limit of its efficiency. First Solar’s bread and butter cadmium telluride, on the other hand, has a higher theoretical efficiency limit, and First Solar has shifted its businesses focus from building large factories to make panels with cadmium-telluride cells to developing more efficient panels, said CEO Jim Hughes during the event.

Who is TetraSun?

So why TetraSun? Apparently Silicon Valley-based TetraSun has some disruptive silicon cell designs that set it apart from the rest of the silicon solar companies. Its designs require fewer manufacturing steps to produce conventional silicon cells, and eliminates the need for silver and transparent conductive oxide. Silver is used to transport electricity produced by the cells, while the oxide is a coating that protects the cells and helps the semiconductor material (such as silicon or cadmium telluride) to grab the light more effectively to produce electricity.

First Solar claims that TetraSun’s cells also can perform better in hot climates than conventional silicon cells. That feature will make solar panels with TetraSun’s cells more desirable in places like the Middle East and India, two markets with a lot of potentials for growth. First Solar says it plans to start making TetraSun’s cells in the second half of 2014.

First Solar believes TetraSun’s technology could produce cells at an over 21 percent efficiency at a cost that is comparable to the expense of making conventional — yet less efficient– silicon solar cells. Most silicon cells today have efficiencies in the mid-teens. SunPower stands out in its ability to make silicon cells at nearly 23 percent, but the company uses a more expensive type of silicon and has its own special cell designs to achieve that high efficiency. First Solar didn’t specify what type of silicon TetraSun has used.

TetraSun has been quiet about its technology development, and its website is just a landing page. Its name did show up as a recipient of a U.S. Department of Energy grant, announced back in January 2010.

First Solar is buying TetraSun from JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. and other investors, and it expects to complete the acquisition in the second quarter of 2013. It’s not disclosing the price for the acquisition.

First Solar also talking to JX Nippon about selling solar panels with TetraSun’s cells in Japan, which has become a hot market since the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011 prompted the government to offer generous subsidies for renewable energy generation.

An efficiency play

First Solar previously used its manufacturing scale and efficient production process to roll out solar panels more quickly than its competitors. That enabled First Solar to sell its panels at a much lower price even though the panels weren’t as efficient. But the plummeting prices for silicon, which is used in the majority of the solar panels made today, has eroded that pricing advantage for First Solar and prompted the company to focus on improving its solar panels’ efficiency. More efficient solar panels could fetch higher prices because they allow developers to build a same-size power plant with less land.

But First Solar apparently doesn’t want to rely on just one semiconductor material for its solar panels. It once worked on developing solar panels with copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS), but it scrapped that program over a year ago. Supposedly the decision to ditch that effort came partly because First Solar was posting losses and looking for ways to cut costs. The company’s chief technology officer, Raffi Garabedian, told analysts on Tuesday that CIGS technology has taken the most private and public funding, yet it still isn’t likely be able to deliver the big efficiency improvements that cadmium telluride can over time.

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It’s a particularly important trend for solar maker startups that need a premium product to sell. For example, on Monday morning, venture-backed solar startup Alta Devices announced that it’s reached 30.8 percent efficiency for solar cells that it’s marketing to mobile gadget makers. For comparison’s sake traditional silicon solar cells are closer to 20 percent efficient.

Alta Devices says it has been working with mobile device maker customers that want to extend the battery life of gadgets using embedded Alta solar cells. The six-year-old company — which has raised $120 million from investors like Kleiner Perkins, NEA and Dow Chemical — has been planning on making a fast-charging solar iPad cover by the end of the year that could end the need to plug an iPad into the wall or laptop to charge.

Alta Devices says the 30.8 percent is a world record for its dual junction solar cell made from the materials gallium-arsenide, and previously the company was saying its cells were 28 percent efficient. Check out this article for more details on Alta Device’s solar cell technology and a tour of its pilot factory. Alta says it has been shooting for an eventual efficiency of 38 percent for its cells.

Remember this type of efficiency demonstrates what a company might be able to achieve. But whether a company will ever do so will depend on factors such as how much does it scale up its manufacturing, how much money is it able to raise and how efficiently it is operating factory equipment.

Alta’s solar cells are more expensive than traditional silicon cells, but the company is hoping that niche markets like gadget makers will be willing to pay a premium for the next-gen cells. Alta is also developing solar cells for military applications, which can enable troops and their devices to charge up off-the-grid in combat less frequently.

Startups aren’t the only ones that are focused heavily on solar cell efficiency. First Solar last week announced a world record of 18.7 percent for cells made from the material cadmium-telluride. That’s up from the 17.3 percent cell it touted in July 2011.

SunPower has long touted highly efficient solar cells. And suppliers like DuPont sell materials that big solar companies can use to boost the efficiency of their cells.

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The project, called Solar Impulse, went on to set world records and spark imagination for a future when air travel could leave low-carbon footprint. Now that plane, embedded with solar cells from SunPower, will make its first flight in the United States this year. The plan calls for running test flights in April and taking off in northern California — likely from NASA’s Moffett Field — in May.

“We want to inspire people to go beyond the limitations they have set for themselves,” Piccard said during an event to present Solar Impulse at an affiliate of the Swiss Consulate in San Francisco Tuesday night. “We want to show with Solar Impulse the need for clean technologies.”

When the plane preps for its flight east to Washington, D.C. and then New York, it will be an awesome sight to behold. The aircraft’s designs aimed to create ample surface area to accommodate solar cells and to minimize its weight and energy needs. The single-seat plane has long wings: at 63.40 meters (208 feet), about the wingspan of an Airbus A340. Yet at 1,600 kilogram (3,527 pounds), it has the heft of a sedan.

It’s also got the power of a scooter: four engines of 10 horsepower each. The plane also sports four lithium polymer batteries to store solar energy during the day in order to power the plane at night. The 11,628 solar cells blanket both the wing and the horizontal stabilizer.

The batteries made it possible for Solar Impulse to complete a 26-hour flight in 2010. The four batteries collectively could provide 90 kilowatt-hour of energy, and they are well insulated so that they could still function at minus 40-degree Celsius, which is the temperature at the plane’s maximum cruising altitude of 8,500 meters (27,900 feet). Each has the energy density of 240 wh/kg. The four batteries weigh a total of 400 kilograms (881 pounds), or about a quarter of the total weight of the plane.

Instead of flying without stopping to show off the aircraft’s technical prowess, the plane will land at three places between San Francisco and the nation’s capital. The idea is to educate the public about the solar-powered plane and inspire people to support clean tech.

The successful flight of 2010 came after years of engineering and flight simulations to figure out and correct problems. The plane took its maiden flight in 2009. The Solar Impulse’s home is at the research institute called Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and it materialized at the hands of nearly 80 engineers, technicians and mission controllers. The $130 million project also has relied on many corporate sponsors, including chemical company Solvay, Omega, Deutsche Bank and Schindler, an engineering firm.

Piccard is a founder with a colorful background. A psychiatrist, he co-piloted the first balloon that traveled non-stop around the world. His father, Jacques Piccard, was the first, along with Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy, to explore the deepest part of the ocean, located in the Mariana Trench. His grandfather, Auguste Piccard, set world records for flying balloons to great altitudes.

Piccard and the CEO of Solar Impulse, Andre Borschberg, came to San Francisco to drum up interest not only for their maiden flight across the country but also the around-the-world voyage they plan to take in 2015. Solar Impulse is building a second, larger plane to circumnavigate the world. It has yet to release the technical specs of the new plane, though Borschberg said SunPower will be the cell supplier. The second plane will still use lithium polymer batteries, but they will have an energy density of 261 wh/kg.

While Solar Impulse has demonstrated that solar energy could be a stand-alone fuel, the days of solar-powered commercial flights are far far away. Borschberg, an engineer and an airplane pilot, believes those days are still about four decades away.

Some interesting tidbits:

*Because of its light weight, the aircraft avoids turbulence by using weather data to calculate the best flight path. It usually takes off early in the morning and land at night.

*The average flying speed of the first plane is 70 kilometers per hour (43 miles per hour). It takes off at 44 kilometers per hour (27 miles per hour).

*The payload, or carrying capacity, of the first plane is 200 kilograms (440 pounds), which account for the pilot and cargo.

*The cockpit of the second plane will be larger so that the pilot could sleep throughout the journey, which will last nearly a month long.

*Negotiating for permissions to fly in and out of countries around the world is a lot of work. It took two years for China to say yes.

*The second plane will have a pressurized cockpit and on-board production of oxygen.

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On Monday, San Jose, Calif.-based SunPower, which makes efficient premium solar panels and trackers, announced a joint venture with silicon materials company Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor, power company Inner Mongolia Power Group and development group the Hohhot Jinqiao City Development Company, to sell solar tech into the Chinese market. The $60 million JV focuses on SunPower’s new C7 Tracker and concentrator technology — a single axis tracker combined with rows of parabolic mirrors and 22.8 percent efficient solar cells — and SunPower is putting in $15 million for a 25 percent stake.

It’s a small move compared to the vast size of the Chinese solar project market. Solar watchers expected China to add 3-4 GW of solar projects this year, 10 GW of solar by 2015, and 50 GW MW by 2020.

And an even smaller deal was announced by an American solar maker in China on Monday, too. Arizona-based First Solar, which makes thin film solar panels, said it has come to an agreement with developer Zhenfa New Energy Science & Technology Company to sell its solar panels to a project in Xinjiang province in early 2013. This would be First Solar’s first commercial project in China.

First Solar actually signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government in Inner Mongolia for 2 GW of solar panels back in 2009 and was hoping to move that project forward last year. But regulatory approval has taken longer than expected. In the most recent quarter First Solar said it has hired Bruce Yung as its new China manager, hoping to kickstart that market.

Looks like large solar deals — like First Solar’s from back in 2009 — tend to get caught up in approval processes and market fluctuations. There was also a 2 GW solar thermal announcement from eSolar back in 2010 with Chinese power equipment maker Penglai Electric, but I haven’t heard about that deal moving forward, either. Smaller steps, working with local partners, seems to be the way to go in the uncertain Chinese solar domestic market.

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The $40 million project is unusual because SolarCity, founded in 2006, has spent most of its resources building up an installation and financing business for residential and business customers (including schools and public agencies). This business has positioned the company as an electric retail service provider who competes with utilities. The Kauai project is the first announced project by SolarCity to build a solar farm for a utility, said Jonathan Bass, SolarCity’s spokesman. (The company previously also lined up a fund from Pacific Gas & Electric‘s investment arm to market solar panels and leasing products to home and business owners).

The engineering and construction contract on Kauai will give SolarCity the experience of working with a new class of customers. More utilities across the country are interested in building their own solar energy projects in order to meet regulatory mandates or because they see them as a good investment opportunities to bet on renewable energy. We have noted in previous posts that SolarCity was going after larger and larger projects, and that placed the company in direct competition with more established players in that segment, such as SunEdison, SunPower and First Solar.

The utility solar market is growing faster than the residential and commercial segments primarily because the projects involved tend to be larger, in tens or hundreds of megawatts, and potentially more lucrative. And many utilities in large states, such as California, need to serve an increasing amount of renewable energy to their customers. Some of the overhead costs also could be lower when it comes to utility-scale projects: you don’t need to send out an army of marketing and sales people to sell consumers systems that are kilowatts in size.

If SolarCity has any ambition to expand beyond the U.S. market, it would do well to gain an expertise in developing and installing utility projects. In many markets overseas, the biggest opportunities lie with working with utilities to boost the amount of renewable energy they serve and taking advantage of government subsidies for that type of projects.

SolarCity is among the first to offer homeowners leases so that they don’t have to pay a high upfront cost of installing solar panels. Instead, homeowners pay a monthly fee via long-term contracts for the electricity from the panels, which are owned by the investors, typically banks, that have set up funds for SolarCity to install and manage the equipment. Solar leases have become popular and are offered by many more companies now, and they accounted for over half of the residential installations in California, the country’s largest solar market. Part of the sales pitch for the leases is a promise  – or at least a strong suggestion – that consumers will end up paying lower electric rates over time than they would with their local utilities.

The California company also has lined up some big-name business customers, including Walmart, eBay and Intel. Nearly a year ago, SolarCity said it had secured a loan to install 300 MW of solar panels in military housing communities across the country.

In recent years, SolarCity entered other types of energy service businesses. It began to offer energy audits and home-improvement services to help homeowners save electricity use and cost. It also now offer energy storage using lithium-ion battery packs from Tesla Motors and install solar powered charging stations for electric cars (such as Tesla’s cars).

For the Kauai project, SolarCity intends to install solar panel on 67 acres that are part of a former sugar plantation. The utility and SolarCity still need to secure local and state permits, but the plan is to start construction in July 2013 and switch on the solar farm in 2014. Electricity from the solar farm will be enough to serve about 6 percent of Kauai’s daily energy demand, the companies said.

Kauai is one of the Hawaiian islands and is home to nearly 68,000 residents. It’s set a goal of generating renewable energy to meet 50 percent of its needs by2023. The project announced Thursday is one of the three solar farms, totaling 30 MW(ac), that are being developed by the Kauai utility.

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The San Jose company says it will suspend production at six of the 12 production lines at Fab 2 for solar cells and 20 percent of the solar panel production in the southeast Asian country. SunPower also will cut about 900 employees, most of them located in the Philippines.

SunPower’s CEO, Tom Werner, issued this statement:

“Industry conditions continue to be challenging and while it is never an easy decision to reduce positions, we must make prudent decisions to effectively compete in an industry with significant overcapacity. Additionally, we’ll further our efforts to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies.”

In April this year, SunPower announced it would shut down another solar cell factory, called Fab 1, in the Philippines. The goal was the same: to reduce costs so that it could sell its solar panels at more competitive prices. SunPower makes the most efficient silicon solar panels on the market, but its special technology also is more expensive. Its strategy has been to charge higher prices for the more efficient solar panels. But this strategy doesn’t work so well when there is a big oversupply problem.

Its main rivals, many of them in China, have been selling their less efficient solar panels at far lower prices. The pricing battle partly contributed to a trade complaint against Chinese solar cell makers, and the U.S. Department of Commerce decided last week to impose tariffs on imported silicon solar cells from China.

The tariffs aren’t likely to stop solar panel prices from falling, however. Chinese companies can skirt the penalties by buying solar cells from countries such as Taiwan and assembling them into panels in China. This approach will still increase their production costs, but not nearly at the levels of the tariffs.

SunPower sold a majority stake to French oil giant Total last year in order to gain financial help. SunPower said its 2012 sales forecast remains unchanged, and it will provide more details about its cost-reduction plans when it discusses its third-quarter earnings on Nov. 1.

SunPower isn’t alone in idling production lines and laying off a huge number of employees. First Solar has been doing that. Some veterans in the industry, such as Q-Cells in Germany, went bankrupt or have been sold. Many startups that tried to scale up production in the past two years failed because they couldn’t reduce their manufacturing costs fast enough. Solyndra and Abound Solar are two examples. Others, such as MiaSole, got scooped up on the cheap by conglomerates looking to add a diverse set of solar technologies and services in their portfolios.

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