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As the week morphs into the weekend, here are some short takes from the solar PV realm to mull.

LG gets serious. With the news that REC Wafer has signed a $340 million deal with LG Electronics to supply multicrystalline wafers, we can take the Korean firm's plans to get serious about solar more seriously. LG said in October it planned to convert an old plasma-panel factory to one suited for manufacturing cells and modules, stating its intentions to ramp a first 120-MW PV production fab by the first quarter of 2010, with a second 120-MW line to follow a year later.

REC will start shipping limited quantities of wafers next year, with amounts increasing through the duration of the contract, which runs until 2014. Given that those first wafer shipments won't be arriving until early 2010, LG's original roadmap of volume production in the first quarter is open to question.

Solyndra second opinion. Amid the reporting of chief scientist Marcus Beck's departure from Solyndra (which has yet to be confirmed by Beck, his "former" company or his supposed new employers, First Solar), the speculation mill has churned with rumors of "problems" at the Fremont, CA-based CIGS company.

In a chat I had about a week ago with a solar industry source (one who has first-hand knowledge of the firm), he called Solyndra "the best of the CIGS companies in Silicon Valley....they're very dynamic." One of his measures of a company's health? The number of cars in its parking lots. Solyndra's lots, he told me, are full during the work week and almost full on the weekends, while those other CIGS guys have lots of empty spaces. I can also tell you that Solyndra's front-end production facility was quite full when I toured it a few months ago.

Sovello CEO puts IPO on hold...for now. Ted Scheidegger, CEO of Sovello (the company formerly known as EverQ), has told Reuters that plans for an initial public offering have been been pushed back, since "in the current environment, planning is impossible," adding, "when the funding situation has changed again, we will resume our plans."

He also told the news service that the company does not "expect to see the (photovoltaic) market in 2009 to be shrinking versus 2008. We continue to assume and expect growth overall in the PV market," although it "will not be as quite as dynamic as in the previous years."

Headcount reduction. KRQE-TV in Albuquerque, NM, reports that Advent Solar has laid off 55 of its 94 employees, making it the latest solar PV manufacturer to reduce its workforce. The silicon cell/module company also let 68 workers go in March, saying at the time that it needed to retool its production line. Advent joins OptiSolar, HelioVolt, SunEdison, Suntech, and others in the layoff column.

L.A PV power surge. Two commercial solar-power systems were turned on during the past few days in the City of Angels. The 512-KW (DC) of combined installations at the Staples Center and Nokia Theatre in downtown L.A. have been activated, according to Solar Power Inc., who designed and built the arrays.

Farther west in Century City, the top level of a parking structure next to the MGM Tower now hosts a 1408-panel, approximately 287-KW system, which was installed by SPG Solar. (btw, I estimated the size of the system based on a 575,095 KW-hour/year generation figure cited in the press release, using a standard back-of-the-envelope calculation of 2 KW-hours of AC output for every 1 watt DC installed.) 

Closer to my northeast L.A. home, neighbor Skip just had about 2 KW of PV panels racked on his roof, something he's been wanting to do for a year or so.

Morgan moves on. Jim Morgan's retirement as chairman of Applied Materials marks the end of an era. Although Mike Splinter has been running the show on a daily basis since he took over as president/CEO in 2003 (and largely guided the company into the PV business), Morgan's name has been synonymous with the semiconductor/LCD/solar/etc. process equipment manufacturer since the late 1970s when Applied was nowhere near a force to be reckoned with. It was Morgan who charted the course that made Applied one of the pillars of the innovation economy and the 800-pound gorilla in its sector.

In my few dealings with Jim, I found him engaging and gentlemanly, as eager to talk about snow skiing and charitable efforts as he was about the chipmaking business. Good luck to chairman emeritus Morgan, a Silicon Valley pioneer.