Your daily dose of Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News

Exhibiting for the first time at Intersolar last week was Best Solar Hi-Tech Co., Ltd., the thin-film PV manufacturing start-up, created by LDK Solar’s founder and CEO Xiaofeng Peng. Brochures displayed by the company detailed the plans to spend $2.5 billion over the next three years to reach a capacity of over 1GW annually using Applied Materials’ ‘SunFab’ turnkey large 5.7m² glass substrate (Si) thin-film technology. This would seem to give confirmation to the fact that Best Solar, a privately held company, was the un-named company that Applied Materials referred to in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in March, 2008 as having placed a $1.9 billion order for its SunFab lines. Read more >>

SEMI, the global industry association for equipment, materials and services companies in the semiconductor and photovoltaics industries, has announced that it is to collaborate with Intersolar at next year’s exhibition. The partnership will see SEMI manage all aspects of the PV manufacturing equipment and materials segment of the global solar energy exhibition, which, like Intersolar 2008, will take place next year in the New Messe Munich... Read more >>

Spire Corporation has said that customer demand has prompted the company to develop and introduce a combined photovoltaic cell and module production line capable of producing 25MW per annum. The company said that it would introduce the new turnkey line at the Intersolar trade show in Munich, Germany this week. Read more >>

An Italian start-up, Estelux, has given a contract to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., to oversee the construction of it first polysilicon production facility to be built on an existing petrochemical site in Ferrara, Italy. SOLON Group was said to be an owner of shares in Estelux. The plant is expected to cost approximately €360 million and produce 4,000 tins of polysilion per year with full capacity expected to be reached in 2010. Read more >>

Tempress Systems, a division of Amtech Systems has received a follow-on order from an existing customer and initial orders from two new customers, all based in Asia, the company said. The orders amount to $8.5 million for Tempress’ diffusion processing systems. Read more >>

Manz Automation, the automation component specialist, has announced its receipt of an increase in capital, which was today approved by the Supervisory Board. In total, 896,011 new shares were issued with a subscription ratio of 4:1 from June 13th to 27th, 2008. The company has also been added to Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Prime Standard Market. Read more >>

Hyundai Heavy Industries is to enter the solar cell manufacturing industry on the back of an order placed with centrotherm photovoltaics AG, for five 50MW turnkey crystalline solar cell manufacturing lines. All five lines (250MW) will be delivered in 2009 to Hyundai’s Eumesong location in South Korea. "It gives us great pleasure to enable a further company to make a successful, industrial entry into the photovoltaics market," commented Robert Hartung, CEO of centrotherm photovoltaics. "Crystalline solar cells remains our strongest area. We are constantly researching improvements in production processes and provide performance guarantees for our turnkey lines... Read more >>

SOLON S.p.A. has concluded a framework agreement with Deutsche Bank that will see the construction of turnkey solar power plants with a total capacity of 150MWp in Italy. The agreement between the Italian subsidiary of Solon AG and Deutsche Bank will run from 2008 to 2010, with the majority of the solar parks to be located in the south of Italy. Read more >>

With plans to boost its sales into the photovoltaic market to over $1 billion in sales in the next five years from approximately $300 million currently, DuPont has said that it will more than double its production capacity of thick-film metallization pastes at its Electronic Materials DuPont Dongguan Ltd. (EMDD) facility in China. Read more >>

The European Photovoltaic Technology Platform  (EUPVTP) has proposed a set of recommendations to enhance the PV industry in Europe. Under the Presidency of Slovenia, the Annual General Meeting saw the Technology Platform outline the “Solar Europe Initiative” of Europe’s Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan, which discusses the requirements of the European PV industry in order for it to remain competitive and meet its development targets. Read more >>