Dive Brief:

• California-based SunPower plans to expand production capacity by 25% with a new factory in the Philippines that will produce 350 megawatts-worth of photovoltaic panels annually.
• The plant, expected to be operational in 2015, is sorely needed as SunPower's existing plants have been running at full capacity most of this year. Running at capacity helped propel the company's third-quarter earnings to $108.4 million, reversing a loss of $48.5 million in the year-ago quarter. 

Dive Insight: 

Ben Kallo, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., sees SunPower's plans as a sign that the slump in the global solar market is over.  “I think you’ll see others start to step up production capacity as new global markets emerge,” Kallo told Bloomberg. For utilities, the news is a harbinger that the move by customers to distributed generation in nowhere near abating.