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This edition of PV-Tech’s solar short takes blog-column examines Micron’s first exploratory steps into solar manufacturing, Phoenix Solar’s burgeoning expertise in thin-film PV installations, OptiSolar’s muddled outlook after the First Solar pipeline sale, Barclays Capital’s updated solar market and polysilicon forecasts, and that intrepid solar-power system installation team orbiting our planet.
With the winds of the economic downturn lashing their faces, Energy Conversion Devices’ Mark Morelli and Harry Zike stiffened their upper lips and doled out more details of what is being called a “prudent companywide plan to reduce costs and slow production” during a hastily organized conference call with the analyst community Monday, after the U.S. stock market closed. Here are some additional insights into the company’s actions offered by its president/CEO and CFO, with a small dollop of obligatory commentary.
The tremendous surge in the solar PV space over the past several years has put added pressure on the few accredited testing labs around the world, with months-long backlogs of customer modules waiting in the queue for analysis, test, and certification. Just as the solar-on-growth-hormones era abates somewhat, new and expanded testing facilities are coming online, including TUV Rheinland’s joint venture with Arizona State University’s Photovoltaic Testing Lab and Underwritersw Lab’s (UL) PV Technology Centers of Excellence facilities in Silicon Valley and Suzhou, China.
I can’t dispute iSuppli über-analyst Henning Wicht’s overwhelming argument showing European supremacy in installed solar power capacity over the Americans, as well as the fourth-place overall position of the States in cell manufacturing behind Europe, China, and Japan. Europe and Germany in particular rock the world when it comes to solar, thanks to generous government assistance, public exuberance, and a coterie of outstanding companies pushing PV forward. But my inner patriot compels me to point out a list of reasons why solar power technology, which was born in the USA, still has some bragging rights in its birthplace.
The idea of Tokyo Electron and Oerlikon Solar joining up in a comprehensive “strategic cooperation” in the thin-film PV market is a powerful one. Imagine all of mighty TEL’s R&D, production, sales, marketing, and technical support intertwined with Oerlikon’s leading-edge amorphous/micromorph-silicon TFPV prowess. But the reality of their new partnership appears to be alot less sexy.
The breaking of the buck-a-watt manufacturing cost barrier by First Solar, turnkey CIGS and CdTe plays by centrotherm and Roth & Rau, BP’s real estate adventure, the future of solar fuel, and renewable energy down on the (pig) farm make up this group of solar short takes for your collective cogitation.
Another California winery has gone solar, but this time the PV power system follows the sun from dawn ‘til dusk. J. Lohr’s Paso Robles operation has turned on what’s being called the largest solar tracking array in the North American vino biz—a 756-KW ground-mounted, single-axis system deployed over three acres, designed and installed by Conergy, which will offset about 75% of the power needs of the winemaker’s 2000-acre spread.
The age of the gigawatt-scale solar deal has arrived. Major U.S. utility company Southern California Edison and solar thermal upstart BrightSource Energy have inked contracts for seven major power plants, which, when/if built, will eventually generate 1.3 GW from their Mojave Desert locations in southeastern California. While I would love to see the elegant, futuristic power towers sending solar-sourced juice to the metropoles of California some day, color me a wee bit skeptical.
If you were to take the Feb. 4 New York Times’ “Dark Days for Green Energy” news story at face value, you might think the solar and other renewables businesses are completely tanking. There’s little disagreement that the global recession is having a big impact up and down the solar PV value chain. But is the sky really falling as fast and hard as the article suggests? Not according to some of the grassroots solar-biz folks I spoke with at the GoGreen Expo held in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago.
“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories,” proclaimed President Barack Obama during his eloquently sober-serious inauguration speech. His words comforted those who seek a future, both for the country and the planet, which depends on the wholesale adoption of renewable energies…
