Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>

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 >>