Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

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 >>

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 >>