Profile

SunPower Corporation is an American energy company that designs and manufactures crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and solar panels based on an all-back-contact solar cell invented at Stanford University. The company is majority owned by Total and is publicly traded on the NASDAQ as SPWR. The initial technology and ideas that led to the creation of SunPower started from solar power research projects in the lab of Richard Swanson, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. On April 24, 1985, EOS Electric Power was officially incorporated by co-founders, Richard Swanson and Richard Crane, an engineer in Swanson's lab. Robert Lorenzini later joined and the company's name was changed to SunPower in 1988. The original plan was to develop and market solar concentrator systems and the next couple years were spent securing funding.