Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

As we walked through the dusty, weedy area of previously tested solar modules known as the "boneyard" at the Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory (PTL), my tour guide and lab marketing manager Paul Symanski warned me that "there might be snakes" among the piles of Solar Power Corp., Astropower, and other museum-worthy units. He offered this comment nonchalantly, as if he were asking me if I took cream and sugar in my coffee. Read more >>

Southern California Edison's project to cover more than 100 warehouse and other industrial rooftops with 250 MW of solar/PV modules continues to move forward. Next week, the supplier of the first 2.2 MW's worth of PV for the initial installation on 600,000 square feet of rooftop will be announced. Here's a short statement that company spokesman Gil Alexander just sent me via email. Read more >>

Monday's announcement that Dow Chemical's Building Solutions unit has asked Global Solar Energy to participate in its Department of Energy Solar America Initiative (SAI) project to develop building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products came as no surprise--to me, anyway. During Chip Shots' visit to Global's Tucson, AZ, new plant last Friday, my hosts gave me a head's up on the news. The manufacturer (yes, manufacturer) of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film PV will work with the megacorporation's subsidiary to create and bring to market flexible solar-roofing materials, part of the SAI's goal of creating "solar electricity cost competitiveness with grid electricity by 2015." Read more >>

I recently became aware of another photovoltaic startup, one based in El Monte, not far from my digs in Los Angeles. Dina Lozofsky, who I met when she worked at UCLA with the California NanoSystems Institute, recently took the VP of IP development and strategic alliances position at Solarmer Energy. As she told me in a recent email, the PV newbie (with UCLA-developed basic tech) "is working to make flexible, translucent, efficient polymer solar cells a reality, and we have just achieved the first demonstration of our technology. As far as we know," she continued, "this is the first polymer solar cell charging of a mobile phone (see photo below). The panel was successfully tested out charging multiple brands of phones." Read more >>

The idea may not be original, but it has an elegant obviousness: why not use some of the many industrial rooftops in the sprawling southern California megalopolis as sites for megawatt-level, solar-powered electricity-generating plants? The scale of the recently announced Southern California Edison (SCE) project, however, is unprecedented, dwarfing that of any comparable plans, such as Colexon Energy's deployment of First Solar and other PV modules on rooftops of chicken farms and other commercial structures in Germany. Read more >>

The Edenvale area of San Jose is becoming a little hotbed of photovoltaic activity, but the latest company set to move there remains in stealth-mode information lockdown. As the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday, Stion has become the third PV firm over the past year or so, joining CIGS concerns Nanosolar and SoloPower, to succumb to the city of San Jose's offer of redevelopment monies for manufacturing tooling ($700,000) and workforce training ($100,000) as part of Mayor Chuck Reed's "green vision"/emerging technologies fund agenda. The company will move from its current Menlo Park location into a one-time IBM building in the south San Jose neighborhood. Read more >>

Few places cry out more for the widepsread implementation of solar energy solutions than the desert state of Arizona. Can you imagine the sweet irony of all those air conditioners working overtime during the blazing summer months, eventually getting their power from household PV modules, building-integrated arrays, or even from solar power channeled through the grid? Read more >>

It's the end of week and time to follow up on a couple of recent stories, including First Solar's latest results and cautionary tales about the Chinese semiconductor industry. Read more >>

If you've looked at Applied Materials' 1QFY08 results announced yesterday, your eyes are not deceiving you: the equipment company booked more new orders from its global services, display, and energy and environment solutions units combined than from its silicon segment---$1.385 billion for the threesome compared with $1.075 billion for the core semi equipment business. Read more >>

How do flexible electronics, American football, financial and market results, politics, and photovoltaics go together? They don't, except as fodder for some Monday morning perspectives on Chip Shots. Read more >>