In Mazomanie, Cardinal Solar has an eye on the sun and high-tech manufacturing

The furnace at Cardinal Solar Technologies on this village's west side is far from ordinary.

Yes, it heats the 180,000-square-foot building. But the primary purpose of the $5.5 million, 120-foot-long apparatus, which took six months to install, is to harden 2-by-4-foot sheets of quarter-inch-thick glass used to make solar photovoltaic panels.

If projections bear out, it may be a while before the 1,200-degree, gas-fired convection furnace is allowed to cool, as more solar energy installations are built around the world, according to a Feb. 13 Wisconsin State Journal report.