Interest read about the CEO of First Solar. I look forward to a day when Arizona and Arizona companies lead the way in Solar technology!
A year ago, Rob Gillette wasn’t even sure what Tempe-based First Solar Inc. did.
Today, he’ll tell a Scottsdale audience how he became CEO of the biggest solar-panel maker in the world and how the company plans to keep pushing down the price of solar power until it compares with traditional energy sources like Natural gas.
Enterprise Network business group will be the first public appearance from Gillette since he left the top post at Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix for First Solar in October. The Presentation to the
“Until July of last year, I didn’t know who First Solar was, honestly,” Gillette said Tuesday. “I got a call from a recruiter looking for a referral. I started tracking it. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe where it started and where it had gone.”
In the past decade, First Solar moved from a small operation started by an Ohio glassmaker to a publicly traded company with high-priced stock. In addition to the research facility and factory in Ohio, it has factories in Germany and Malaysia. The company regularly makes announcements for billion-dollar power plants using its products and acquisitions of smaller developers. The company has more than 4,500 employees worldwide, about 1,000 in the U.S.
“For me, (joining First Solar) was an opportunity to be part of something that had significant growth upside,” Gillette said. “And also to be part of a business platform that could change our generation. You don’t get too many opportunities in life to do that.”
Gillette, like other top executives at First Solar, has been compensated well for his move. He made $16.5 million in stock, bonus and salary for joining the company in 2009, according to regulatory filings.
Gillette has spent the past eight months traveling. He has visited the company’s factories; met with officials in Germany and Spain, where the company makes most of its sales; discussed subsidies with officials in France, where First Solar plans another factory; and gone to China, where First Solar could build a factory and the largest photovoltaic solar-power plant on the planet.
The focus at First Solar has been to keep a steady stream of business in places like Germany and Spain, where solar subsidies are high while developing new markets like the southwestern United States.
“There will be a lot of opportunity for future growth in Arizona,” he said. “California has a really focused effort on meeting its (renewable-energy) goals. It is developing, and there is the opportunity to share power across borders.”
480-652-2004