Premium module maker SunPower Corp has appointed Jeff Waters as the CEO of its SunPower Technologies business unit with immediate effect.
At the same time, SunPower said its Executive Vice President of Operations, Bill Mulligan will transition out of his role over the course of 2019, without sharing more details. Mulligan joined SunPower in 1998, but left in 2010 to lead SolarBridge as its president and CEO, only to come back to SunPower when it acquired SolarBridge.
Under its SunPower Technologies business unit, the solar company holds together its global manufacturing, research and development and SunPower Solutions activities. ""We're pleased to welcome someone of Jeff's caliber to lead our global manufacturing operations, R&D work, and our ongoing, successful cost reduction activities," said Tom Werner, SunPower CEO and chairman of the board." With Jeff at the helm, we expect to continue to hold this leadership mantle, especially as we ramp our game changing Next Generation Technology (NGT) cells and modules and deliver on our commitment to American manufacturing."
The management says its NGT cells and modules with 72-cell format at 450 W have been UL certified and will be delivered to initial commercial customer sites during Q1/2019. By the end of 2019, it expects to report some 250 MW of nameplate NGT capacity and deliver 'meaningful volumes' in 2019 as well. Ramping up the NGT production will run parallel to full production start of its Performance Series (P-Series) solar panels at the SolarWorld Americas facility in Hillsboro, Oregon that it acquired in 2018 (see SunPower Acquires SolarWorld's Oregon Fab). In the TaiyangNews Advanced Solar Module Technology Report 2018, SunPower's 60 cell module ranked first regarding power rating – which at the time of the publication was 370 W (see
Before joining SunPower, Waters was the president and CEO of material sciences company Isola, and before that he was senior vice president and general manager with Altera Corporation.
SunPower has been working on its changed business strategy to focus on distributed solar and manufacturing, moving away from utility scale business development. In 2018, it sold almost 4.7 GW of utility scale solar power development pipeline to Clearway Energy Group (see Clearway Acquires SunPower's 4.7 GW PV Pipeline). SunPower