First Solar’s chief commercial officer Georges Antoun, revealed more details on the upcoming solar panel production facility to the Kiwanis Club of New Iberia Oct. 12.

Primarily, he revealed the layout and specific aspects of production. A majority of the physical manufacturing within the facility is fully automated which is necessary to stay competitive in the market, according to Antoun.

However, that doesn’t mean the facility won’t need individuals at entry-level positions. Boys and Girls Club Regional Director and Kiwanis Chairperson Brianna Davis, asked if there would be opportunities for the older teens looking for a job.

According to Antoun, roughly 20% of the factory staff will be entry-level positions, meaning an individual fresh out of high school could attain it. That number doesn’t account for the workers needed to transport and process the solar panels not working directly at the factory.

Antoun also revealed more information on their first wave education program. In addition to training future generations of workers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette training lab, they plan to launch the factory with 200 pre-trained workers. These workers won’t be sourced, but rather 200 locals will be hired and sent to Ohio to train in their pre-existing factory. Those workers will come back and train the additional 500 factory staff to make a total of 700.

“We will bring them back here to teach, so basically train-the-trainer type of stuff. That will be the nucleus that basically builds the rest of the factory for us,” Antoun said.

A study conducted by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette claimed the factory will generate three to five outside jobs for each of the 700 total workers.

The First Solar production process is virtually identical across factories. According to Antoun, First Solar utilizes a fully integrated end-to-end production process unlike competitors, which assemble solar modules out of products produced in different factories

“Our competitors basically take different products, manufactured in different places around the world or different buildings in the same region and assemble them together. We started with a sheet of glass on one end, and four hours later, we have a solar module.”

The process isn’t the only way they differ, as the end product is wildly different from the solar panels commonly found on the market. First Solar uses a micron-thin layer of a stable compound, Cadmium Telluride, which uses a chemical reaction to work as a semiconductor. This makes it more durable and less prone to stopping from minor breaks.

Most panels use a brittle, hair-thin conductor module wafered between two sheets of glass. The primary threat to this design is vibration. The panels may take strikes which damage the thin conductor module inside, but leave the glass of the panel untouched. Because these panels are made of several modules wired in series, disabling one renders the entire panel inoperable.

At the end of First Solar’s panels’ expected 40-year lives, 95% of the components of the panels can be recycled. The glass from the panels goes into making bottles, while the semiconductors will go back into the factory for re-use.

Antoun wanted to thank several people and organizations for their involvement in launching and supporting the endeavor including Parish President Larry Richard, Mike Tarantino and the Airport Board, Governor John Bel Edwards and the Louisiana Economic Development Center.

“It was a team event, a team effort to bring this here and I want to thank everyone for being a big part of it,” Antoun said.