Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Q-Cells chief executive officer Anton Milner has resigned with immediate effect amid fears of a 'loss of confidence' from the company's investors. The supervisory board met to discuss a management shake-up on March 11, at which point they accepted Milner's exit. Current CFO, Nedim Cen, will take over as CEO, holding both positions.

New orders for its diffusion processing systems have pushed Amtech Systems new order flow past US$80 million in its 2010 financial year. Solar orders in its fiscal Q2 reached US$27 million. New orders worth US$8.5 million were recently received from two new customers in Asia and one new customer in Europe.

Kyocera has announced that it will significantly increase its annual solar cell production targets to meet the growing demand for solar energy products in the global market. New targets aim for an increase to 1GW annually by March 2013, which is more than 2.5 times the current fiscal year 2010 production volume of 400MW.

2BG and Rise Technology, the company founded by researchers of the La Sapienza University in Rome, have agreed to a collaborative move on the development of solar cell technologies. The partners will research the production of crystalline silicon cells less than 100μm thick.

centrotherm photovoltaics has posted preliminary financial results for 2009, highlighting strong revenue growth for the past three years and forecasted continued growth in 2010. The multi-market equipment and turnkey supplier posted revenue of €509.1 million in 2009, an increase of 35.9% compared to revenue of €374.7 million in 2008.

Pushing the ‘reset button’ on its business model and plans for the future may still be a work in progress at Q-Cells after racking up losses of  €1.35 billion in 2009. Preliminary financial figures for last year show revenue declined considerably compared to 2008. A reduction in capacity coupled to general industry price declines of between 50 and 55% for c-Si cells and 35 to 50% declines for c-Si modules impacted results. Sales reached €801 million in 2009, compared to €1,251 million in 2008.

DEK Solar has received further orders for its PV1200 solar cell metallization lines from Zhejiang Hongchen. The China-based PV manufacturer first used these systems in early 2009, and then placed a follow-on order in May, 2009 as its ramped cell production.

The first customer using a fully-automated ‘dry-in/dry-out’ wet processing system developed by Stangl, now part of Singulus Technologies, has accepted the system for volume production. The system is being used for wet-chemical treatment of crystalline solar wafers for antireflective layer deposition and was claimed to have demonstrated ‘excellent’ cell efficiencies.

By reducing the contact resistance at the electrode, Mitsubishi Electric has increased the cell conversion efficiencies of its polycrystalline silicon wafers to 19.3%. Confirmed by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan, the cell (15 cm x 15 cm x 200 micrometers) is 0.2 points higher than the company's previous record of 19.1%. The company also reported an ultrathin polycrystalline silicon PV cell (15 cm x 15 cm x 100 micrometers) reached efficiencies of 18.1%, a 0.7-point improvement over the company's previous record of 17.4%, also verified by AIST.

Robust customer demand for solar cells and OEM modules from JA Solar means that the company cannot meet 2010 bookings without increasing capacity. The company is targeting an increase in nameplate cell capacity to 1.1GW in 2010, which will be primarily for its ‘high-efficiency-enabled’ cells, using selective emitter technology. OEM modules and ingot production will also ramp in 2010.