Do As I Say, Not As I Do?

Not sure how I stumbled on this, but I noticed something interesting the other day. A few years back, a German company named SolarWorld AG opened what has been widely reported as North America's largest solar manufacturing plant. The fab is located near my house in Hillsboro, OR. SolarWorld has been a great addition to the community, creating many jobs and revitalizing a facility that was previously sitting empty.

What does SolarWorld do? The make solar panels. Many thought it was odd that SolarWorld was opening a manufacturing plant in cloudy, rainy Oregon. However, this was just a production plant for the rest of North America. Besides, you can still generate plenty of solar electricity in Oregon. Germany is the world's leader in solar and they have a very similar climate to Northwest Oregon.

Wondering where I am going with this? Here it is. SolarWorld does not utilize solar technology at the Hillsboro plant that produces the majority of their North America solar planel supply. Check out this image from Google Earth.

Click for larger view

See those clean, white rooftops? Thats SolarWorld...the largest solar manufacturing plant in North America. See any solar on the roofs? Me either. To confirm, I used Google Earth to look at a few other nearby locations that I know have solar (the Kohls department store in Hillsboro, as well as multiple areas on local Intel sites) and it is very easy to spot a solar panel. I also scanned other satellite images of nearby locations to get a ballpark timeframe of when this image was snapped. Its recent...within the last 12 months, tops.

Seems odd to me that this company doesn't use their own product...especially with the clear rooftop real estate they have! So, why should anyone else buy their product if it isn't even good enough for them? I won't be.