IndustryWeek : Flush with Cash, China Descends on U.S. Solar Market

Sometime in the next two months, either Texas or Arizona will be chosen as home to the largest solar panel assembly plant in the United States.

But it won't be an American company celebrating its unveiling. Instead, it will be Suntech, the fastest growing, largest solar panel manufacturer in China.

One of the biggest solar panel assembly plants in the U.S. is SolarWorld, located in Hillsboro, Ore. It pumps out enough cells to fit 1,700 solar panels a day and already construction is underway to quintuple its production in the next year. One problem: SolarWorld is based out of Bonn, Germany.

When President Obama announced his intention to make the U.S. "the world's leading exporter of renewable energy", this wasn't what he had in mind.

Though the U.S. solar market lags far behind Spain, Japan and Germany, the stimulus package signed last February included grants for businesses and utilities that install solar energy systems, along with grants for makers of renewable energy equipment.

Meanwhile, the wholesale price of high-end solar panels has fallen by 50% in the U.S., to around $2.40 per watt, according to analyst Nathaniel Bullard at the research firm New Energy Finance. As that price continues to drop, solar is quickly becoming more affordable to a larger block of the U.S. market and competitive with more traditional forms of energy.