SolarWorld Will Supply Solar Panels for World’s Premier Pump-maker, Grundfos

SolarWorld, the largest solar manufacturer in both Europe and the Americas, has become world supplier of solar panels to Grundfos, the pump industry’s largest, most innovative producer, SolarWorld announced today. SolarWorld will provide solar panels for use with Grundfos’ solar-powered submersible water pumps in countries on many continents.

The agreement pairs two vertically integrated manufacturers, well-established technology innovators and models of sustainable development. Grundfos selected SolarWorld partly as a result of an intensive audit of SolarWorld’s largest manufacturing campus, located in Freiberg, Germany. Grundfos’ 23-page audit inventory surveyed SolarWorld’s compliance with high labor, environmental, quality, safety and anti-corruption standards, including its adherence to its own code of conduct as well as the UN Global Compact.

More specifically, the two companies for several years both have maintained committed, robust strategic partnerships with Water Missions International. The global water-aid engineering nonprofit, based in South Carolina, combines discounted and donated pumps from Grundfos and solar panels from SolarWorld to lower high rates of water-borne illness and childhood death in developing economies. A single Grundfos pump, powered by as few as four SolarWorld solar panels, can provide clean, safe drinking water for as many as 5,000 people for decades.

Grundfos – a technology-focused, foundation-owned company based in Denmark, with manufacturing on several continents, including the United States and Europe – has blazed a trail of technological innovation partly in providing ever-more-powerful solar-powered water pumps that uniquely integrate a device to invert direct current flowing from solar panels into alternating current to power the pumps. This development has significantly expanded the technological versatility and geographic application of that keystone of the industrial revolution, the water pump.

SolarWorld has set many of its industry’s key milestones, including first 1 megawatt of annual production, 1-MW solar installation and 25-year power guarantee. Like Grundfos, SolarWorld is vertically integrated to assure quality control at every link in its industry’s value chain. The company is co-developing silicon-refinement capacity in Qatar, it produces crystalline silicon ingots and wafers and photovoltaic cells and panels, and it develops utility-scale solar power projects.

"It’s hard to imagine better-suited world technology partners,” said Frank Asbeck, chairman and chief executive officer of SolarWorld AG. "We are quite simply gratified that our paths of innovation are combining to achieve maximum output, reliability and sustainability.”

About SolarWorld

SolarWorld AG manufactures solar power systems and in doing so contributes to a cleaner energy supply worldwide. The company, located in Bonn, employs approximately 2,600 people and carries out production in Freiberg, Germany, and Hillsboro, USA. From raw material silicon to the solar module, SolarWorld manages all stages of production ? including its own research and development. Through an international distribution network, SolarWorld supplies customers all over the world with solar modules and complete systems. The company maintains high social standards at all locations across the globe, and has committed itself to resource- and energy-efficient production. SolarWorld has been publicly traded on the stock market since 1999. More information at www.solarworld-usa.com.