Thought Leadership Profile: Total Facility Solutions

From Production Facility to Power Plant: Adapting Construction Practices to the Changing Solar Market Realities.

The economic equilibrium of the solar energy sector has undergone a jarring adjustment over the past year. The frenzy of production capacity additions has abated, as the demand for photovoltaic modules has not kept up with the prodigious output from the factories and has suffered due to regional policy perturbations, pushing industrywide inventory into the gigawatts and causing the price of panels to drop precipitously. As solar manufacturers either slow down or stop their factory construction ramps – and growing numbers of lower-tier players leave the competitive pitch altogether – the strategic focus has shifted across the value chain.

For those companies – both incumbents and new entrants – continuing to carefully add new or update existing fab capacity, the pressure to reduce capital and operational costs is more profound than ever. For many of those same companies and their partners, attention has also turned to the downstream market. Everything from residential and commercial rooftop solar power systems to large, multi-megawatt-scale photovoltaic power plants in numerous global markets provide a growing deployment appetite for PV, as well as an opportunity to buttress sagging profit margins.

As this multi-pronged disruption in the solar marketplace crystallizes, M+W Group has adapted to the evolving needs of its customers. On the production facility side, the design/build firm has increased the depth of its participation and collaboration with its clients, emphasizing critical communication and buy-in from the earliest stages of the project through the entire construction sequence, identifying opportunities to expedite the schedule along the way.

With a track record of more than 10 GW of installed PV production capacity, the company has honed its ability to accurately define factory space requirements on retrofit and greenfield sites, as well as production equipment layouts and high-purity piping and other electrical and mechanical process-critical infrastructure needs (provided by M+W subsidiary Total Facility Solutions) – all achieved while delivering a very competitive cost model. By executing seamlessly on a holistic project package, M+W offers customers a compelling pathway to reduced risk and accelerated time to market.

Many of the best practices perfected by M+W in its facility design and construction business are applicable to the company’s work in the solar power EPC sector as well. For example, a value engineering master layout and checklist for a utility-scale PV farm takes into account such factors as the best use of the specific property, potential shading issues and optimized on-site materials handling, preassembly and storage procedures before the first shovel goes into the ground. This exhaustive checklist correlates layout and other site-specific suggestions with the respective competitive cost savings that each action item represents – an invaluable tool for PV power plant project management.

With its expansive capabilities and global footprint, the group is well-positioned to help customers take advantage of the accelerating proliferation of solar power in emerging regional markets where cost parity is at hand or grid infrastructure is limited or nonexistent. As the solar industry moves into the next stage of development and the promise of a terawatt future grows brighter, only M+W Group provides a full-spectrum, cost-competitive design/build solution for thin film, crystalline silicon, concentrator photovoltaic and concentrated solar thermal production facilities and power plants.

Total Facility Solutions’ vision is to be the preferred, single-source provider of process-critical infrastructure for customers in the semiconductor, life science, photovoltaic and data center industries.

Total Facility Solutions
1001 Klein Road
Suite 400
Plano, Texas 75074
Phone 972.535.7300
info@tfs-us.com
www.tfs-us.com

Joe Cestari
President

Mike Anderson
Chief Operating Officer

Robert Hill
VP and Regional Manager

Joe Miner
VP and Regional Manager

Chris Walton
VP and Regional Manager

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