Securing sustainable growth with strategic personnel management. The right personnel strategy helps us to achieve our ambitious corporate objectives. The major components of this strategy are the qualitative and quantitative expansion of employment in relation to our group growth. By investing in the qualification of our employees we develop and maintain the existing know-how in the company, optimize our internal processes and, at the same time, open up individual career perspectives. New recruitments will help us gain additional people to enable us to expand our production on a broad basis and to inject new ideas into the SolarWorld Group. Both of these things taken together create a sustainable basis for our planned growth and guarantee safe jobs for our employees in the future.

We created 175 new jobs group-wide in the reporting period and thus increased the number of employees by ten per cent in comparison with the previous year. As at 31 December 2009 SolarWorld had a total of 2,000 employees on its payroll. The proportion of female employees grew to 22 (previous year: 19) per cent.

New recruitments were mainly made in the areas of Production, Research & Development and International Sales as well as in central group functions such as Controlling, Accounting, IT, Human Resources, Procurement, Technical Service, Logistics and Marketing.

In Germany, the number of employees increased by twelve per cent to 1,341 (previous year: 1,198). In the USA, also, the strategically important market of the future, we upped our workforce. The headcount there rose by 6 per cent to 644 (previous year: 609). Staff fluctuation increased in the year under review and amounted to a group-wide figure of 9.3 (previous year: 3.6) per cent. This was mainly attributable to restructuring measures at our US sites. In Camarillo, California, the legacy module line was taken out of service in the first quarter of the year and a new, highly efficient line was commissioned. In Vancouver, Washington, the production facility was refocused in the first quarter to the reprocessing of silicon material. At these sites, we employed less people. In Hillsboro, Oregon, on the other hand, we created an additional 124 regular employment jobs. The absenteeism rate in the SolarWorld Group amounted to 3.4 (previous year: 2.5) per cent. As far as the other recorded social service indicators such as health protection are concerned, we refer at this point to the integrated  Report on sustainable corporate management/Social service indicators

Assuming responsibility – creating training opportunities. In the year under review 86 (previous year: 83) young people received qualified vocational training at the German locations of SolarWorld. The training rate was 6 (previous year: 7) per cent. In 2009 we took on 21 (previous year: 26) new trainees/apprentices. In addition, we offered 9 (previous year: 8) young people an opportunity to start a practice-oriented sandwich course on “Industrial Management”. In the reporting period we gave 61 (previous year: 64) per cent of the trainees an employment contract after they had passed their final examination.

Personnel expenditure rose in line with growth. Personnel expenditure in the year under review amounted to € 99.8 million (previous year: € 90.1m). This is equivalent to a share of 10.4 (previous year: 13.1) per cent of the total operating expenditure and 9.9 (previous year: 10.0) per cent of total group revenues. Development of material income statement items

Employing temporary staff for specific tasks. In 2009, also, the specific employment of temporary staff – some of whom have qualified technical training – was again an important tool in our personnel policy. We can thus act quickly and flexibly at our production sites during phases of expansion. In Freiberg alone, 36 people found future-oriented permanent employment with SolarWorld in 2009 as a result of their temporary work for the company. Including our temporary staff, a total of 2,725 (previous year: 2,498) people were employed by the SolarWorld Group as at the cut-off date of 31 December 2009.

Developing a leadership culture together. Our worldwide SolarWorld locations continued to grow successfully in the reporting period. In order to further improve our international cooperation we want to develop our SolarWorld corporate culture appropriately. It will be designed to support our strategy while taking our cultural diversity into consideration. This is why, in the year under review, we started to work intensively on the concept and establishment of a cross-location set of values for a SolarWorld leadership culture. In the future, all management staff are to align their actions with this culture and thus also improve group-wide cooperation – an important success factor for the group as a globally operating company. We started the process at our headquarters in Bonn as well as in Camarillo in the USA. In this process, members of the first management level identified corporate values considered to be relevant to corporate success.  Strategy and action  A group-wide validation phase will follow as the next step of implementation from 2010 onwards.  Human resources – future development

Inspiring, gaining and retaining employees with a strong employer brand. A priority of our 2009 personnel strategy was to position SolarWorld more strongly as a national and international employer. It is only in this way that we can gain the best talents for the group in the competition for qualified employees, and also lastingly retain employees who already work for us. Within the framework of our “Employer Branding Strategy” we have, for example, strengthened our PR and press activities and have thus specifically appealed to potential applicants by way of media reports. In addition, we have increased our presence at the appropriate fairs and exhibitions. Through such internal and external measures we want to communicate our vision and our corporate culture in Germany and in the USA and inspire people with the ideas of SolarWorld.

This is the kind of commitment that pays off: According to a joint study by Manager Magazin and the Berlin trendence Institute of August 2009, SolarWorld is one of young German engineers’ desirable employers. For the four editions of the study, some 25,000 students were interviewed – in the “Engineering Edition”, SolarWorld came in at 15^th place as the highest ranking newcomer.

In order to awaken enthusiasm and interest in our young engineers for the future technology of photovoltaic engineering, we continued our higher education marketing in the reporting period. This included an extensive offer of internships, theses and doctorates in our company as well as dialogue with students and professors in the departments of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, process technology, physics and chemistry. Our cooperation with the “Portland Community College (PCC)” in the vicinity of our US site in Hillsboro was continued in the year under review. In the context of this partnership we support the qualification of “Photovoltaic Technology Associate’s Degree”. We also expanded our support for the MECOP Internship program for the combined universities of Oregon State, Portland State, and the Oregon Institute of Technology. We also continued the excellence program started in 2008 for doctorates in the field of silicon-based photovoltaic technology (“Graduate School of Photovoltaic Technology”) in cooperation with the Technical University and Mining Academy (TUBA) at our German production site in Freiberg. In September of 2009 we also awarded the SolarWorld Junior Einstein award for the fourth time. The award, which carries prize money of € 5,000, goes to young scientists who do their research in photovoltaic technology or related topics. The award winner in 2009 was the young scientist Dr. Thomas Müller. In his doctoral thesis he dealt with amorphous silicon layers for surface passivation and emitter and rear side coatings on crystalline silicon.

Promoting employees, developing talents, shaping growth. At SolarWorld, personnel development is of strategic importance. Accordingly, the direct costs for education and training in the year under review amounted to a group-wide figure of € 0.71 million (previous year: € 0.70m), rising analogously to the increase in staff numbers. We consider this to be an investment in the future because, over the medium term, a lack of skilled workers as an effect of demographic and structural change will influence the German economy more than the current economic crisis. According to the Association of German Industry and the Association of Employers’ Federations, we are already short of some 60,000 skilled workers in the computer science, natural science and engineering segments. Those who want to be successful must therefore not only gain qualified new staff but also specifically develop those who are already working for the company. The personal development perspectives of each employee are identified on an individual basis in an annual employee appraisal interview and appropriate continuing education measures are derived from this.

Another future-oriented element of our personnel development is the cross-location know-how transfer within SolarWorld. Through an exchange of experts we can efficiently use our global engineering know-how “Made by SolarWorld” at all our locations and, at the same time, expand it group-wide. This is a competitive advantage for SolarWorld and also represents a career opportunity for the individual employee. We have developed a posted labor directive and offer inter-cultural training in order to optimally further the mobility of our employees, to make it easier for them to get used to a new living and working environment, and to reduce language and cultural barriers. An example: In 2009 we started our “Operator/Worker Exchange Program”. To date, the first technicians from the Freiberg production area worked at our Hillsboro, USA, site for about two months. Starting in January of 2010, US employees began a similar exchange in Freiberg in order to contribute their experience and, reciprocally, to learn from their German colleagues. This program will be consistently continued and expanded to other employee groups. The regular exchange of Best Practice Methods among our different sites is part of our knowledge management. Moreover, it also improves the cooperation and cohesion within the group by sustainably strengthening the networking relationships.

In 2009, our new international executive development program commenced. SolarWorld AG needs a strong management that guides employees efficiently – so that together we can attain the goals set and continue to succeed in competition. This is why we started our SolarWorld management feedback – initially in Bonn – to implement a 360° assessment for managers in 2009: Feedback comes from supervisors, from colleagues, from immediate co-workers, and also from self-assessment. These responses create the basis for deriving, agreeing upon, and implementing individually coordinated development measures.

Employees participate in the company development. Part of our corporate culture is to permit our employees to participate in the success of SolarWorld. This is why our remuneration concept contains a profit-oriented participation model (GOMAB). At the German locations the employees, in addition to their salaries, receive a performance-related bonus. At the Freiberg location, over 87 per cent of the employees were paid according to collective bargaining agreements in 2009. GOMAB is part of the in-house collective bargaining agreements of the Freiberg companies and replaces other collective bargaining elements. In 2009 the GOMAB bonus payments amounted to € 8.7 million (previous year: € 14.2m).

In Germany we also offer an in-company pension plan with an employer’s contribution as well as benefits to promote capital formation with the maximum contribution from the employer.

In collective bargaining negotiations with the miners’, chemical workers’ and energy workers’ union (IG BCE), our German subsidiaries, Deutsche Solar AG, Deutsche Cell GmbH, Solar Factory GmbH and SolarWorld Innovations GmbH, jointly agreed in 2008 to introduce an individual performance bonus for employees on the negotiated wage rate at the beginning of the year 2009. Payment of the performance bonus is designed to reward employees above-average and very good performance.

In the USA, we provide a Company Bonus similar to the German GOMAB. This bonus is based on group-wide indicators as well as on the performance of SolarWorld Industries America Inc. and SolarWorld California Inc. In 2009, these payouts amounted to € 1.1 million (previous year: € 0.8m). Additionally, in the USA we contribute to the retirement savings plan (401k) of our employees. Furthermore, we offer an annual Individual Bonus Plan (IBP) to professional employees and managers in key positions.

In the year under review we introduced a profit-sharing model similar to GOMAB at our location in South Africa. At other locations such as Singapore and Spain there are also separate bonus systems.

Managing ideas with the company suggestion system. As a matter of principle there is an open working climate within SolarWorld which, due to flat hierarchies and short decision-making paths, is an excellent basis for the quick implementation of good ideas. At all locations the executives in charge check and coordinate suggested improvements on a continuous basis. At our location in Bonn, particularly, we intensively use the additional advantage of direct contact and open communication with the Management Board to permanently optimize processes and structures.

In addition, SolarWorld promotes the suggestion system with special programs: At the production locations in Germany and the USA we have, for example, also established a formal suggestion system. In Hillsboro, USA, we created focus groups of employees at the beginning of 2009 that are tasked with making proposals concerning conversion of the shift system. The objective was to optimize effectiveness for the company and employees in production. These were efforts that paid off for both sides: The result was that, in July 2009, the old rotation principle was replaced by a compressed working week. The new working time model provides for longer shifts in a shorter working week. The new system improvements benefit our employees and at the same time meets our operational requirements.

At our German location Freiberg a total of 209 (previous year: 164) suggestions for improvement were made in 2009. The cost savings from the successfully implemented suggestions was estimated to amount to € 57,950 (previous year: € 35,100).

Another instrument for continuous process optimization is our Total Productive Management (TPM).  Interlinking of management tools  Presently, 27 teams are working at our Freiberg location on increasing process efficiency and thus on cutting costs. TPM is not only limited to production but also refers to the areas of Technical Service, Logistics, and IT. In the future we want to increasingly motivate our employees to participate in TPM, which is why we have offered a “Challenge Cup” that is going to be awarded every six months based on factors such as the results of the monthly “walk-arounds” as well as the audits. Initially, only teams from Freiberg may apply, but in the future it is conceivable that the “Challenge Cup” will also be offered globally.

Inquiring about employee satisfaction, discovering improvement potentials. In the course of the year under review SolarWorld has identified different indicators that permit conclusions to be drawn as to employee satisfaction.  Report on sustainable corporate management/social key performance indicators What is more, employees at our German locations were able to take part in the “Germany’s Best Employer 2010” study by the Great Place to Work^® Institute in June 2009, in which questions were asked about team orientation and fairness within the company. This voluntary offer was taken up by 58 per cent of the employees. SolarWorld successfully placed itself on the list of the 100 best employers in Germany. SolarWorld is one of Germany’s best employers