Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

Deutsche Solar AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of SolarWorld AG, has entered into a new polysilicon contract with DC Chemical, valued at $580 million through 2016. The polysilicon deal ensures the ability of the company to meet new solar wafer contracts worth $350 million from customers in Germany and China, the company said. Read more >>

 (SV Solar) has established a 2MW pilot production line in Sunnyvale, California to manufacture its ‘Sol-X’ concentrating PV modules. Pilot scale manufacturing equipment has now been deployed at its 15,000 square foot mixed-use facility, the company said. Read more >>

REC is collaborating with Silicon Genesis Corporation (SiGen) on its thin-PV substrates made using its ‘kerf-free’ wafering process. REC is also collaborating with SiGen to develop high-volume manufacturing equipment and develop silicon ingot shaping requirements. The SiGen technology doesn’t require wafer sawing with wafers produced being within 150um to 50um in thickness and less brittle than conventional solar wafer. Read more >>

Green Energy Technology Inc. (GET) has signed a five-year service contract with Applied Materials to support GET’s ‘SunFab’ production line, located in Taiwan. Get also produces multi-crystalline silicon wafers. Read more >>

Abengoa Solar has said that its new Solnova 4 Concentrating Solar Power plant, using parabolic trough technology will begin construction in September, 2008 with a 50MW power output capacity. Abengoa Solar said that it has finalized the funding for the new plant planned in Saville from 14 banks in its latest funding round. Read more >>

Collaboration between Manz Automation AG and Basler AG has led to Manz claiming that it has developed the fastest cell testers for crystalline silicon solar cells at more than 2,400 solar cells per hour. In an exclusive deal Manz has integrated Basler’s electroluminescence measurement technology into its testing platform, which is fully automated. Read more >>

Unisolar has officially approved transformerless inverters from Sputnik Engineering for use with its products. With immediate effect, all amorphous thin-film modules from Unisolar – both branded and OEM products – can be combined with SolarMax products from Swiss inverter manufacturer Sputnik Engineering without further approval procedures. Read more >>

ChengDu Tianwei New Energy PV Module Co. Ltd. (Tianwei) has selected stringing and tabbing systems from Spire as well as multiple ‘Spi-Assembler’ 6000 systems to fully automate the soldering of individual solar cells into strings ready for busing. Tianwei is automating these production steps as part of its plans to increase capacity of its solar cell products. Read more >>

Suniva is to supply monocrystalline silicon solar cells to Solon, Europe’s largest solar photovoltaic module manufacturer, in a contract worth in excess of $500 million through 2012. Suniva is expanding the number of production lines to meet demand. Read more >>

Leading CPV (Concentrated Photovoltaics) cell producer Emcore announced today that it entered into two new supply agreements for solar cells and receivers with a total value of over $40 million. The larger of the two purchase contracts is a multi-year supply agreement for solar cells, to be delivered over four years. Read more >>