Idaho company partnering on solar energy
A new international partner will help Micron, a Boise company, take another step toward green energy.
Micron Technology has formed a partnership with an Australian company developing new solar power technology.
The huge company, Origin Energy, also generates and retails energy to about 3 million customers.
The two companies signed an agreement in December to work together on manufacturing Origin's special photovoltaic solar components, Micron officials said in a Jan. 8 internal memo.
Origin has already produced commercial solar panels using a new silicon wafer called "sliver" technology at a facility in Australia. The company has been testing the manufacturing of these unique chemically etched silicon cells at Micron in Boise this month, according to sources close to the company.
The sliver panels are built from cells thinner than most solar cells yet highly efficient, Origin says on its Web site. This can reduce the cost of the silicon by up to 90 percent and make solar technology more competitive.
Australia National University experts say the payback for investing in solar power could drop from 20 years to five once the technology is perfected and in production.
"It was clear that combining our semiconductor manufacturing expertise with Origin Energy's solar experience could result in a powerful partnership," Micron Chairman and CEO Steve Appleton and Chief Operating Officer Mark Durcan said in the memo.
In a release issued late Thursday, the companies confirmed the deal and said their two strengths will boost the project.
Micron officials declined to comment.
According to Origin's Web site, the sliver technology team's semiconductor specialist, Dmitri Gordeev, had previously worked for Micron.
Almost a year ago, Micron announced its interest in converting idle buildings in Boise and Nampa to manufacture solar panels and high-efficiency lighting components known as LEDs.
A few months later, it began developing LED manufacturing facilities with $5 million in state and federal stimulus dollars.
A partnership with Origin seems to make sense, said Mike Howard, a senior analyst with iSuppli and a former Micron employee.
Origin makes the technology and could, ostensibly, use it in its power generation.
"One of the keys to solar is a lot of the customers are big customers," Howard said. "This way they have a locked-in customer."
Even while Micron's involvement in solar and LEDs is far behind its memory operations, Howard expects both of them to grow.
"Micron isn't just getting into this to keep people busy," Howard said. "They want this to be a significant revenue generator."
The hundreds of millions of dollars Micron invested in its now-obsolete silicon memory plants in Boise offer it a chance to develop state of the art manufacturing on both solar and LED technology, he said.
Micron said in the memo it was already seeking to hire staff for the solar partnership, but at what level and how many has still not been made public.
Micron officials have consistently said manufacturing of DRAM - dynamic random-access memory used in personal computers - is Micron's main product and focus.
The company announced that a profit in December of more than $200 million is due to an improved market for computer chips.
The company once employed more than 11,000 people in the Treasure Valley and was Idaho's largest private employer.
Today it has about 5,000 employees in Idaho.
