First Solar 'Confident' of Price Accord With China on Biggest Solar Plant

First Solar Inc., the U.S. company planning the world’s biggest solar-power plant in China, is “reasonably confident” China’s government will set electricity prices high enough to make the project viable, a spokesman said.

The company, which announced the project in September and missed its planned start of construction in June, is still negotiating the “economic conditions” of the power plant with China, said Brandon Mitchener, a Brussels-based spokesman for the Tempe, Arizona-based solar-equipment manufacturer.

The talks involve setting guaranteed above-market rates or similar instruments that support renewable energy projects, he said. China delayed approving premium prices known as feed-in tariffs for solar power that the company said are essential for the viability its project in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, in northern China, First Solar President Bruce Sohn said in May.

First Solar, the world’s largest maker of thin-film solar power modules, rose 11 percent in U.S. trading on Sept. 8 when it announced it would build the 2,000-megawatt plant, set to be the world’s largest array of panels that convert sunlight directly into power. Construction on the first phase was to begin June 1, 2010, with the last stage to be completed in 2019.

Two thousand megawatts can supply the equivalent of about 1.6 million U.S. homes when the plant runs at full capacity.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net.

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