Friday, January 13, 2012

Solectria Renewables doubling workforce, expanding to Asia

By Lori Valigra

Solectria Renewables LLC, a photovoltaic inverter maker based in Lawrence, said it plans to double its workforce to around 200 this year after having grown it 65 percent to 130 people in 2011 as state and federal energy incentives boosted the company’s business.

The company has 116 staffers and 14 temporary employees, and 25 open positions of all types from customer service to sales and technical.

Solectria also plans to expand into China and India by the end of 2012, Scott Bowden, the company’s business development manager, told Mass High Tech. The company makes inverters, which convert DC power from solar panel arrays to AC power for use by businesses, homes or the power grid.

“Inverters are heavy, so it doesn’t make sense to manufacture them in China and ship them to the United States,” he said of the company’s local production. Likewise, Solectria intends to open manufacturing in China and India for those local Asian markets by the end of this year or the first quarter of 2013. However, that business initially will be small, about 10 percent or less of the company’s total business in the first year.

Bowden said the company has benefitted from solar incentives in Massachusetts, which he described as one of the best states for supporting the solar business, and last year from tax credits and tax grants from the federal economic stimulus.

Business is continuing to grow, he said, with the company having added 500-kilowatt smart grid inverters over the past year for large commercial and utility projects. “We can get into much larger projects in the United States,” he said. It also rolled out a product architecture that allows two or more of those inverters to be put together to handle 1 megawatt or 2 megawatt solar stations. “It is very popular,” he said.

Solectria is self-funded and continues to finance its own growth, he said. It has no venture capital and uses only lines of credit from Berkshire Bank. The company is profitable, he said, but declined to give revenues.

It currently occupies 40,000 square feet of space in an old textile mill, up from 20,000 square feet a year ago. Bowden said it added 5,000 square feet in November, but it is looking to add up to 15,000 square feet this year. It has 5,000 square feet as well in its Huntington Beach, Calif., office, and has added several satellite offices.