History

SunPower has been developing world record-breaking solar technology since the 1970s. Our history has been marked by creativity, craftsmanship – and coincidence. Today, we are the global leader in developing high-efficiency solar solutions for homes, businesses, commercial buildings and utilities. But our road to success has had some unlikely twists and turns.

Our record of solar innovation began nearly four decades ago, when our co-founder, Dr. Richard Swanson, was pondering ways to deal with the oil crisis of the early 1970s. At the time, he was working on his doctorate in engineering at Stanford University. While he (and the rest of the world) waited in long gas station lines, Dr. Swanson began to consider alternative energy sources. Solar cells were being used on satellites, a concept that he found extremely intriguing. His engineering challenge was to figure out how to make the cells – which were extremely expensive to produce – more cost-effective. So began a quest that, almost 40 years later, has helped position SunPower at the forefront of both utility-scale and residential solar power production.

By 1985, Dr. Swanson (who by then was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford) had been awarded grants from the Electric Power Research Institute and the Department of Energy to support his solar power explorations. With the help of these funds – as well as financial support from two venture capital firms – SunPower was officially incorporated.

While Dr. Swanson was making his first foray into the solar arena in Palo Alto, California, some other pioneers across the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley were charting a similar course. PowerLight founder Tom Dinwoodie was experimenting with what was to become PowerLight’s flagship product, PowerGuard® solar roof tiles for commercial buildings. While visiting Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) to demonstrate his prototype, he met several of the people who later would become his executive team.

Tom was successful in convincing PG&E to install PowerGuard on a Department of Energy building near Folsom, California. Soon after, Tom and his first employees – who worked in a 40’ x 10’ garage – were hatching a plot to capture the lion’s share of the large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) market. But it would be years before their dreams came to fruition.

SunPower’s first major customers were anything but typical. In 1993, Honda Motor Company called with the news that they planned to compete in the annual Darwin to Adelaide solar car race across Australia. Honda wanted the most efficient solar cells on the planet to power their vehicle. Accordingly, SunPower’s engineers went to work crafting high-efficiency solar concentrator cells – and Honda won the race. Not by a minute or by an hour, but by an entire day. NASA took note, choosing SunPower’s cells for the world’s first solar-powered aircraft, the High-Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) UAV Project. Soaring at 96,863 feet, the flight broke all prior altitude records.

Meanwhile, PowerLight was becoming a "name" in the solar industry. The company completed the first commercial PV installation in North America, a 200 kilowatt (kW) solar-powered system at the Mauna Lani Resort in Hawaii. Next up: America’s biggest rooftop solar system (comprised of 14,000 panels), at a Long Island, New York corporation. And in 2004, the company notched its biggest success: the completion of the Bavaria Solarpark power plant in Germany. With nearly 60,000 of SunPower's panels generating 10.1 megawatts (MW) of power, at the time it was the world’s largest PV installation.

By the late 1990s, the PowerLight team set a goal to add new technologies that would enable solar panels to be used for ground-mounted solar projects. PowerLight Trackers went on to transform the worldwide market for ground-mounted solar trackers, which increase efficiency by following the sun throughout the day.

As the New Millennium dawned, both SunPower and PowerLight were industry leaders. The summer of 2003 brought the dedication of SunPower’s solar cell fabrication facility in the Philippines; the first “fab” constructed outside of Japan, Europe or the U.S. The company also made significant inroads into the international solar marketplace. In November of 2005, the wide-scale industry acceptance of SunPower’s products led to the company’s initial public offering.

A short year later, SunPower announced its intention to acquire PowerLight – and on January 10, 2007, SunPower and PowerLight became one entity. To this day, our legacy of technological innovation and solar expertise ensures that our customers continue to enjoy substantial environmental and financial benefits.

Today, Dr. Swanson’s original vision – that solar energy generated from massive installations in the desert might power the electrical grid - is about to become reality. In 2008, SunPower signed an agreement with PG&E to build the world’s largest – 250 MW – photovoltaic (PV) power plant, set to begin energy delivery in 2010. Florida Power & Light Co. also contracted with us to provide 25 MW of electricity in 2009, and another 10 MW by the end of 2010.

We continue to provide high-energy solar systems for the world’s business and technology leaders, governmental agencies, retailers and other entities, along with the highest-efficiency solar panels for our international residential customers. And, in addition to our U.S. bases of operation, SunPower maintains offices in Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland as well as Singapore, Korea, and Australia.

What’s next? At SunPower we’re always striving to improve our technologies and drive solar power innovation, all with the goal of changing the way the world is powered. After all, there’s always something new under the sun.