Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News
Chip Shots
The Chip Shots blog channels the observations of Fabtech's and PV-Tech/Photovoltaic International's Senior Contributing Editor--USA, Tom Cheyney, a 20-year veteran of semiconductor, advanced micro/nanoelectronics, and solar manufacturing trade journalism. For 15 years, Tom was editor in chief of MICRO (the original home of Chip Shots) until it ceased publication in July 2006. Tom calls Los Angeles home.
Uni-Solar to reach 1-GW manufacturing capacity by 2012, Guha tells PV Summit attendees
24 June 2008
The number-two thin-film photovoltaics company plans to hit 1-GW in manufacturing capacity by 2012, the chairman of United Solar Ovonic (Uni-Solar)
told attendees at the IntertechPira Photovoltaics Summit in San Diego
last week. Toward the conclusion of his presentation on amorphous
(a-Si) and nanocrystalline thin-film silicon, industry maven Subhendu
Guha said that the recent successful
raising of hundreds of million dollars through a public offering of
common-stock shares and repricing of senior convertible notes will allow Uni-Solar to "sustain growth" to the gigawatt level.
Read more >>
Solar industry vet Paul Maycock shares his wit and wisdom at Photovoltaics Summit
19 June 2008
With solar roots stretching back to the days of Sputnik, a stint
running the US photovoltaics program in the late 1970s during the
Carter administration, his many years editing PV News, and operating the PV Energy Systems consultancy of late, Paul
Maycock's institutional memory is as long as anyone in the field.
Although he talked about some of his early experiences (did you know
the US government's PV budget, in a dollar-to-dollar comparison, was
more in 1980 than it is now?), most of his late-afternoon keynote at
this year's IntertechPira PV Summit in San Diego focused on his take on
the present and immediate future of the PV energy conversion arena.
Read more >>Arizona State grabs solar headlines, but Caltech PV power project pushes forward
17 June 2008
Although Arizona State University's recently announced plan
to aggressively add 2 MW of solar power to their electricity scheme in
the next year received a fair amount of coverage, a smaller, more
technologically potent institution of higher learning is about to flip
the switch on the first phase of its own PV power project. The
California Institute of Technology plans to add 1.25 MW of
rooftop-installed solar panel arrays on seven locations around its
Pasadena, CA, campus in the next year, with 200 KW of that coming
online in August, according to Jim Cowell, the university's associate
VP for facilities.
Read more >>
Fad no more? Novellus’ Chen joins GT Solar board
13 June 2008
Novellus Systems' grand poobah Rick Hill has been outspoken in his
skepticism about the prospects for the solar-photovoltaic industry and
his company's archrival Applied Materials' embrace of it.
Read more >>
On an eco-unfriendly news day, GreenTech 2008 conference’s timing couldn’t have been much better
13 June 2008
Nothing like presenting a green technologies conference with a renewable energy focus on a day when oil prices skyrocket to new highs, the Dow Jones stock average takes a nearly 400-point hit, and the US Senate shoots down the Climate Security Act.
Read more >>
GE raises ante in thin-film PV game with PrimeStar Solar majority stake
12 June 2008
General Electric, through its Energy division, has increased its equity stake to a majority holding in cadmium-telluride (CdTe) thin-film start-up PrimeStar Solar, and in so doing, has raised the stakes in the photovoltaic solar contest.
The move by GE puts First Solar,
the market leader in TFPV, squarely in the competitive crosshairs of
one of the largest industrial conglomerates and R&D powerhouses.
Read more >>
Powering state pens: California prisons put solar energy on the front burner
11 June 2008
| Comments (1)
Following up on developments in the solar energy sector does not
usually involve contacting the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation or paying a visit to a penitentiary.
Read more >>
No juice, no glory: Inside the solar arrays powering the Phoenix Mars Lander
06 June 2008
The Phoenix Mars Lander
has whapped the Web world upside the head with its captivating images
from the Red Planet. But without the successful generation of energy by
its two solar arrays (with the help of lithium-ion storage batteries)
to power its science experiments, the mission would be an abysmal
failure.
Read more >>
National Semiconductor’s Halla says company to make solar PV play this summer
06 June 2008
If you're a power semiconductor manufacturing executive and you're not at
least examining the solar energy market, you should make sure your
golden parachute is packed and ready to go. The latest chipmaker
talking photovoltaics is National Semiconductor's Brian Halla during
his company's fourth-quarter/fiscal year-end conference call on
Thursday. (The company had better-than-expected results, btw.)
Read more >>
Kyocera Solar continues Tijuana PV module plant expansion, sees installed base growth
06 June 2008
Q-Cells and the Silicon Border group's announcement that the solar cell manufacturer plans to invest up to $3.5 billion
to build a thin-film production complex in the technology industrial
park near Mexicali, Mexico, may have garnered alot of attention, but
let's not forget another company which has had a significant presence
in Baja California for several years: Kyocera Solar and its large module assembly operation in nearby Tijuana.
The Japanese company's Kyocera Mexicana maquiladora
has been fabbing modules since late 2004 and broke ground on a facility
expansion June 6, 2007--almost exactly a year from the timing of the
Q-Cells news last week.
Read more >>
