Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

Although it still won't divulge much about its process or materials set, San Jose-based next-gen thin-film photovoltaic startup Stion has come ever-so-slightly out of stealth mode. Unlike a few months back when I blogged about the stealthiness of Stion and used whatever scraps of information and speculative research I could dig up, the company has revealed a few more details during a presentation at Greentech Media's PV Annual 2008 conference last week and has just announced the hiring of two new vice presidents. Read more >>

Uni-Solar Ovonics has received permission from local authorities to accelerate its expansion plans at its Greenville, MI, campus, according to a story in the May 29 edition of the regional Daily News paper. The city council approved an amendment to the original deal that results in a near-doubling of the incentive package for the amorphous-silicon thin-film manufacturer, to more than $20 million, in line with the company's plans to double its production capacity there. Read more >>

When I started perusing yesterday's announcement about Veeco's purchase of Mill Lane Engineering, a small Massachusetts-based manufacturer of web coating and deposition systems for flexible solar panels and other substrates, the name of the acquired firm rang a bell. When I saw that the company had an existing order with a "leading manufacturer of thin-film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells," I knew why that memory bell had rung: During my visit to Global Solar Energy's brand-spankin' fab south of Tucson, I had seen the Mill Lane gear on the factory floor. Read more >>

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 >>