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Experienced Global Business, Operations and Sales Leader Joins SunPower as CEO of Technologies Business UnitSAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ:SPWR), a leading solar technology and energy services provider, today announced that it has named proven global executive Jeff Waters as CEO of the SunPower Technologies business unit. This group includes the company's global manufacturing, research and development (R&D) and SunPower Solutions. Waters begins his new role immediately. "We're pleased to welcome someone of Jeff's caliber to lead our global manufacturing operations, R&D work, and our ongoing, successful cost reduction activities," said Tom Werner, SunPower CEO and chairman of the board. "SunPower is a known solar technology leader with the highest reliability and efficiency solar panels on the market. With Jeff at the helm, we expect to continue to hold this leadership mantle, especially as we ramp our game changing Next Generation Technology (NGT) cells and modules and deliver on our commitment to American manufacturing." Waters joins SunPower from Isola, where he worked from Silicon Valley as the company's president and CEO. Isola is a leading material sciences company that designs, develops, manufactures and markets copper-clad laminates and dielectric prepregs used to fabricate advanced multilayer printed circuit boards. Like SunPower, Isola has a significant global footprint with manufacturing, R&D and offices in Asia, Europe and the U.S. Prior to Isola, Waters was senior vice president and general manager with Altera Corporation and also with Texas Instruments/National Semiconductor in both the U.S. and Japan for 18 years in a variety of executive positions, including global sales. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of Notre Dame, a master's degree in engineering from Santa Clara University and a MBA from Northwestern University. SunPower's NGT cells and modules will offer customers similar performance to its X-Series products with significantly lower manufacturing costs. Panels with a 72-cell format at450 watts have been UL certified and will be delivered to initial commercial customer sites in the first quarter of 2019. "When we reach full production, we expect that the cost per watt of the world's highest efficiency NGT cells and modules will be similar to mono-PERC technology, but with superior levelized cost of energy due to higher performance and durability," Werner said. "With the recent funding of our second NGT manufacturing line, we will now have approximately 250 megawatts of nameplate NGT capacity by the end of 2019 and plan to deliver meaningful volumes this year, as well." In addition to ramping NGT, SunPower will begin full production in the coming weeks of its Performance Series (P-Series) solar panels at the recently acquired SolarWorld Americas facility in Hillsboro, Ore. SunPower also announced that Bill Mulligan, executive vice president of operations will transition out of his role over the course of 2019. About SunPower SunPower's Forward-Looking Statements ©2019 SunPower Corporation. All Rights Reserved. SUNPOWER and the SUNPOWER logo are registered trademarks of SunPower Corporation in the U.S. and other countries as well. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/experienced-global-business-operations-and-sales-leader-joins-sunpower-as-ceo-of-technologies-business-unit-300775186.html SOURCE SunPower Corp. |