Tech workers can look on bright side - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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He also wanted to tap into the deep poolof Austin-arewa microprocessor industry workers who have been laid off durinbg the last couple of years. Such workers posseses the skills that translate well to the solareenergy industry, Van Dell And as the number of local microprocessor industry workers reache a three-year low in April, the timinvg of solar companies migrating to Central Texae couldn’t be better for area workers — nor the businesses that need “A solar cell is a semiconducto that generates electricity when you shinw light on it,” Van Dell said.
I was quite well awarw of the strong mix of companies and the skill base in That was definitely on my mind when I moved thecompanty here.” SolarBridge’s move is a scenario that locapl officials want to repeat multiple times with the hope that solar panelp manufacturing fills the void left by the contractionb in the microprocessor industry. But the lack of financialk incentives from the state is creating a dampeningv effect on attracting solar companies to theAustinh area, observers say.
Proposed statew legislation to createa $1 billiojn so-called “Sunny Day Fund” for Texaz to obtain federal grants unded the American Recovery and Reinvestmenr Act would have been used to attrac t such businesses, especially foreign solar companies that want to establisuh their North American headquarters in the Austin experts say. But the legislation, which received a publicc hearingin April, died in the state House Appropriations Committee. To date, SolarBridge, which was founded in 2004 as SmartSparkl EnergySystems Inc., and HelioVolt Inc.
are the two most prominent solaer energy businesses operating in theAustin HelioVolt, which is backed with at leas t $118 million in venture capital, is wrappingf up a plant that will eventually crankm out a thin film that acts as a solar “After June, I think there are goingt to be some projects rolling in said Raj Prabhu, managing partnee of the Mercom Capital Group LLC, an Austin-based technologg research firm. “It is more, ‘Whpo is going to give me the best incentive packagderight now?’” The semiconductor industru is consolidating, and jobs that are leavinh Texas are not expected to Central Texas has lost 500 microprocessor industryu jobs just this year.
Local chip companies now employ 15,700 workers — the lowesft level of such local jobs since April 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Laborf Statistics. During the first quarter, worldwide sales of semiconductorsreached $44 billionj versus $62.8 billion during the same period last a nearly 30 percent the Semiconductor Industry Association reported. On the the demand for solae technology is growing Randall Baker, the principal of Austin-based PuraVidza Ventures LLC, said other statea are throwing big money at prospectiv solar companies to woo them into establishinv manufacturing plants in their states.
Many state officialsd believe Texas doesn’t need to do so it isn’t. But it also has the former chip workers to offersuch companies, and those workerd can be retrained for solar in eight weeks to 16 weeks, Baker said. But the clock is running. In March, Bret Raymis, who worked for 30 yeards in thesemiconductor industry, joinedx Austin-based Apache-Solar Corp., where he is now the vice presidenr of business development. The company is developinv a system with photovoltaic cells combined with architecturalglasx panels, and plans to begi production within 12 months.
He said solar is stil l early in its development compared with the progress that semiconductors made inrecen decades. Investors and companies need to ramp up solar technologty in the United States beforr the technology gains a footholdin Asia. “They’rd sitting on the fenc with their money,” Raymis said, “and they’ree going to wake up and all that business will goto China.
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