Today a new solar company announced plans to set up shop in Tennessee. Missouri-based Confluence makes materials for solar cells, which are pieces of solar panels. Most of its customers are in China.
Confluence will hire about 250 workers over the next year and a half in Anderson County, northwest of Knoxville.
Chief Operating Officer Jim Highfill says the new production facility there will come online gradually.
“If the market continues to grow at the rate they say – at 35, 40 percent a year – it’ll happen in the next 18 months. If it grows faster than that, then sooner than that. If it grows slower then a little slower than that.”
Highfill says the site could eventually expand to take on even more workers. And officials mentioned the company could relocate its headquarters from the St. Louis area to Tennessee a few years from now.
Highfill says Confluence came to Tennessee in part to be close to other solar companies already setting up here, like Wacher Chemie and Hemlock Semiconductor. The state is also investing millions of federal stimulus dollars in a solar farm and research institute.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM