Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

Although there were plenty of "me-too" technologies discussed at the recent IntertechPira Photovoltaic Summit in San Diego, one start-up outfit's approach offers more disruptive potential than most thin-film PV wannabes. Wakonda Technologies, based in Fairport, NY (but soon moving to larger digs near Boston), has been working for about three years on an intriguing TFPV variant--high-efficiency germanium and gallium-arsenide-based cells made on a flexible metal-foil substrate which is potentially scaleable to high-volume roll-to-roll manufacturing. Read more >>

Although SVTC has been dabbling in photovoltaics for awhile with a few customers, it really got serious about the PV space when it formed the SVTC Solar unit in late April. The process development foundry hired solar vet Kurt Laetz to run the operation, leased 87,000 square feet of cleanroom, lab, and office space in the Edenvale Redevelopment Project Area of San Jose (now home to several PV concerns), and said it expected to be fully operational by the end of 2008, with a goal of working with 25-30 companies of varying sizes within three years. Read more >>

When GE's Energy division announced earlier this month that it had taken a majority interest in cadmium-telluride thin-film PV module start-up PrimeStar Solar, the Golden, CO-based company found itself on the solar manufacturing industry radar--and in this blog's crosshairs. Although not fully cloaked in stealth mode, the two-year-old firm hasn't shared much information about itself, starting with its detail-deficient Website. After a presentation by Fred Seymour, PrimeStar's VP of technology, at IntertechPira's Photovoltaic Summit last week in San Diego, in which he provided a good general CdTe overview, a few more details also emerged about his team's efforts chasing down First Solar. Read more >>

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 >>

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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 >>