Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

Renewable Energy Corporation ASA has invested $40 million for a 20 percent shareholding in Mainstream Energy Corporation (MSE), a renewable energy company headquartered in San Luis Obispo, California. Read more >>

SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc. and the Center for Advanced Vehicle Systems (CAVS) at Mississippi State University have demonstrated that SemiSouth's enhancement-mode silicon carbide (SiC) Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) reduced an off-the-shelf solar inverter energy loss by as much as 50 percent. Read more >>

China's largest energy group, XinAo is to install and test EMCORE’s concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system at a coal gasification project in Langfang, China with the possibility that the project would require more than 60MW of CPV systems. XinAo will undertake reliability and performance testing on a 50 kilowatt (kW) pilot project. Read more >>

Specialty metals company 5N Plus, supplier of cadmium telluride to First Solar, is issuing new shares in the company to raise $46.2 million for production expansions, general corporate purposes and possible acquisitions. Read more >>

ARISE Technologies has set new ambitious plans to increase PV cell production. The company has announced an overall plan to reach 560MW production levels by the end of 2012, up from the previous target of 360MW - a 56 percent increase. The expected increase in silicon solar cell production is due to ARISE Technologies’ plan to expand its own polysilicon production at its pilot plant in Waterloo, Canada to 50 tons per annum in 2009 and 400 tons per annum by 2010. The company also intends building a new high-volume plant with a capacity of 10,000 tons by 2011. Read more >>

China Nuvo Solar Energy, with its collaboration partner, Pioneer Materials, Inc. (PMI) has said that the planned pilot line in Chengdu, China will be used for the development of higher efficiency stacked solar cells using copper indium gallium selenium (CIGS) thin-film materials. Read more >>

Photovoltaic cell and module manufacturer Solsonica, based in Rieti, Italy has selected gas abatement technology from Edwards that will be used for abatement during silicon nitride (SiN) deposition in its polysilicon solar cell manufacturing operations. Solsonica has purchased two ‘ATLAS’ thermal conditioning systems (TCS) for its requirements. Read more >>

LDK Solar is to raise $300 million in Senior Convertible Notes - due 2013 - to primarily fund the completion of its two polysilicon plants currently under construction in China. The capital is thought to be required primarily for the second and largest plant under construction that has an expected capacity of 15,000MT per annum, completion of which is planned for next year. Read more >>

The 1ères Rencontres Photovoltaïque, France’s first venture into the world of hosting photovoltaics conferences, is to take place on April 9th, 2008. The one-day event looks set to cover the main aspects of the industry, with talks on market status, R&D trends, materials, economics and finance in the sector and governmental issues. Read more >>

As Evergreen Solar nears completion of its 80MW Phase 1 expansion of its Devens, Massachusetts PV plant making its proprietary ‘String Ribbon’ solar wafer technology, the company has announced Phase 2 expansion at the facility, which will double capacity to 160MW. Read more >>