Yingli Solar (aka Yingli Green Energy*) has been the largest solar panel manufacturer in the world the past couple of years. In 2009, it reached a cumulative solar panel production capacity of 1 gigawatt. By 2012, it had reached a production capacity of 2.45 gigawatts per year!
Needless to say, Yingli has had many customers. One major customer, Fuji Electric Co., recently went out of its way to thank Yingli Solar by naming it one of its best suppliers of 2014. Well, Fuji wasn’t trying to single out Yingli Solar, but that was the result of a massive survey.
“Out of 6,000 suppliers comphrehensively evaluated by Fuji Electric, Yingli was one of only eight companies to be recognized with an award during Fuji Electric’s third annual supplier conference, which took place in Tokyo on July 17th, 2014,” Yingli Solar writes. “Yingli is also the first Fuji Electric supplier headquartered outside of Japan to be honoured since Fuji’s supplier awards program was first established three years ago.”
That’s super impressive in my book, and it makes me happy to be a Yingli Solar stockholder.
Here’s a bit more from a Fuji Electric spokesperson: “The Japanese solar energy market is now booming thanks to a national feed-in-tariff for renewable energy, and we at Fuji Electric appreciate Yingli Green Energy’s efforts to realize cost reductions in their high performance solar PV modules. Yingli contributed greatly to increasing Fuji Electric’s sales for our Solar Energy Generation System business, and its high value solar PV products are helping Japanese consumers reduce their electricity costs while making a positive impact on the environment.”
With the Latin American market just warming up to solar (sorry for the bad pun), Yingli is now moving in there as well, supplementing its major pipelines in China, Japan, Australia, Europe, the US, and elsewhere. In another recent press release, Yingli noted that it “has expanded its footprint in the Americas by opening the Company’s third Latin American office in Santiago, Chile.” Yingli has already deployed 25 megawatts of solar power in Chile, but it expects to distribute much more there in the coming years. Solar power is already competitive on the Chilean market without any form of government subsidy, and without putting a price on the pollution that comes from coal and natural gas power plants.
“Chile is a high-potential solar market and home to some of the strongest solar irradiation in the world, particularly in the Atacama Desert,” noted Mr. Robert Muhn, Managing Director of Yingli Green Energy Chile, “While we see tremendous growth potential in Chile’s utility-scale market, we also anticipate that the country’s relatively high electricity prices and strong solar resources will provide a foundation for a thriving and sustainable distributed generation market in the future.”
Congrats to Yingli. Again, I’m happy to be a shareholder!
*Full Disclosure: I own stock in Yingli Green Energy.