First U.S. solar power plant factory goes online

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First U.S. solar power plant factory goes online

Wed, 07/09/2008 - 02:13 - NLN

Hard by the Las Vegas airport, the industrial infrastructure of the solar economy is rising in a former furniture factory. Phalanxes of orange robots swivel and dip as they practice assembling components for solar power plants to be built by Silicon Valley startup Ausra.

It’s North America’s first solar power plant factory and it went online Monday when Ausra CEO Robert Fishman and U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, flipped the switch to start the production line. Ausra’s automated 130,000-square-foot factory is key to the Palo Alto company’s aim of cutting manufacturing costs to make solar energy competitive with fossil fuels.

Read full story at Fortune.