Won’t affect noise reduction plans; on target for year-end goals
In a surprise announcement, Evergreen Solar said last week that it will move the assembly of its solar panels from Devens to China sometime next year. But Evergreen officials say the Devens factory will continue to manufacture silicon wafers and photovoltaic cells, leaving in place the operations and equipment responsible for much of the noise that has plagued its Harvard neighbors for a year.
“The question of noise is really moot,” said Evergreen spokesman Chris Lawson in a phone interview. That’s because whether or not the panel fabrication moves elsewhere, Evergreen must still quiet its operations to levels set by the agreement it negotiated with the Devens Enterprise Commission (DEC) and the Harvard selectmen in July.
Says Peter Lowitt, DEC land use administrator and director, Evergreen’s business decisions have “no bearing” on their noise violation. “Evergreen Solar must comply with the noise resolution agreement,” he wrote in an e-mail message this week. “The issue has become sustained compliance and we still have the problem of measuring compliance because of the difficulty distinguishing [Evergreen’s] contribution from other sources.”
Evergreen, which is operating under a temporary certificate of occupancy at Devens, has been working for months to bring its plant into line with DEC noise standards and to meet the milestones set by the July agreement. So far Evergreen has met all of its commitments except completion of a worst-case scenario test and installation of permanent monitoring equipment. As reported in the Oct. 30 issue of the Harvard Press, the DEC voted at its Oct. 27 meeting to extend the deadline for passing the worst-case test until the end of January 2010. Evergreen has said it cannot pass that test today, which requires the company to run its equipment at maximum capacity, and that to do so it may have to build a wall around the plant. The company is also awaiting agreement among the sound experts working for Evergreen, DEC, and the neighbors on a new procedure for measuring Evergreen noise that takes account of background noise. A decision was expected this week or later in November.
Moving the fab, motivated by a more than 30 percent drop in the price of solar panels in the U.S. and the lower cost of assembling them in China, doesn’t change Evergreen’s need to get into compliance at Devens, said Lawson. “We’re going to do that anyway, and with the assembly panel fab at full ramp. Even if moving the fab does mitigate the noise even further, we certainly would already be well in compliance.”
Panel assembly at Devens, in the meantime, will continue until mid-2010, at which time Evergreen will “mothball” its equipment. In theory, the fab can be reactivated should economic conditions change, though Lawson says that is unlikely. According to Lawson, the cells and wafers manufactured at Devens will be shipped to China, where they will be assembled into panels by Jawei Solar, Evergreen’s partner in Wuhan.
Lawson says the impact of the move on employment at Devens is uncertain. Evergreen promised the state 350 new jobs and, according to Lawson, employs 800 full-time and contract workers at the Devens plant today.
“We’re reluctant to talk about any kind of job numbers, because the move is so far down the road. It’s nine months away. We won’t even begin the transition until the middle of next year and we don’t expect to complete the transition until the end of 2010. A lot can happen in nine months.”
