SAN JOSE — A solar roof maker has launched a venture in San Jose that increasingly is a rarity in the high-cost Bay Area: a new manufacturing center.
GAF Energy has opened a San Jose factory where the maker of integrated solar roofs will combine manufacturing, research and administrative functions in a gamble that the unified effort will ratchet up efficiency.
“Our customers are primarily homeowners who are adding a new roof,” said Martin DeBono, president of GAF Energy, whose headquarters, factory, and research and development operations are based on Optical Court in south San Jose. “We build the entire roof all at once with the solar component included.”
GAF Energy is a subsidiary of Standard Industries, a 140-year-old manufacturing company whose origins date back to 1886 when Standard Paint Co. was founded. GAF Energy also is a sibling company of GAF, a roofing company.
“If you take the resources and expertise of Standard, one of the world’s largest private companies, and combine them with a team that is dedicated to driving energy from every roof, you have the ability to scale a next-generation, cutting-edge solar product,” DeBono said.
GAF Energy currently employs about 140 people at the San Jose complex. But those numbers might expand swiftly.
“We expect that number to double in the near term,” DeBono said. “We will have 250 to 300 people working here.”
GAF Energy is leasing 112,000 square feet at 5981 Optical Court in San Jose, including roughly 90,000 square feet of manufacturing space.
Company executives believe it’s more efficient to operate in a coordinated fashion at one location than to send the research and development engineers overseas to a manufacturing site in Asia to ensure that a solar roof is being manufactured to the correct design.
“We are trying to create a culture where we are all in this together at the company,” DeBono said. “It’s better to have it all under one roof rather than have your manufacturing oceans away from here. You can cut corners on logistics. Our inventory isn’t just sitting on a ship on the water.”
With current bottlenecks in the supply chain, that advantage could become more pronounced, especially with researchers and design teams working in the same building with assembly line employees.
“There is a high degree of excitement for the engineers to see their experiments come to life in real-time,” DeBono said.
Previously, GAF Energy had been producing solar roofs in South Korea. It’s unusual for a solar components maker to shift its factory operations from Asia to an expensive locale such as California.
GAF Energy believes it can produce a solar roof within 17 days after it’s been ordered. That’s a sharp reduction from the four weeks that might normally be required for a roof manufactured overseas.
For homeowners, GAF Energy aims to install a roof — once it’s been manufactured locally — in a two-day process that mirrors the typical turnaround time for a conventional roof. On the first day, the roof is removed. On the second day, the roof is installed, according to DeBono.
In the wake of coronavirus-linked economic woes and job losses, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo embraced the new solar roof design and manufacturing venture.
“With construction complete on GAF Energy’s new Edenvale facility, our city is looking at the on-shoring of hundreds of clean energy employment opportunities in development, manufacturing, and administrative support at a critical juncture for our local economy,” he said.
