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The US Department of Energy has granted Owens Corning and Solexel $13 million to develop building-integrated photovoltaic projects. The building materials-manufacturer and crystalline PV module-manufacturer hope to combine their respective technologies to produce new and affordable solar roofing systems.
Californian manufacturer of power management systems eIQ Energy has announced it will be working in partnership with Abound Solar and BiPV systems-manufacturer Focus Materials, to produce a new range of PV glass and aluminium curtain walls.
Later this year Ford will unveil the electric version of its best-selling Focus and in the process launch a two-pronged attack at carbon emissions in the US. Not only will the manufacturing giant be reducing emissions on the road with its first electric car, but it will be repeating the feat in the home by selling solar charging stations to its drivers.
China’s first BIPV fire station was put into service in Baoding, Hebei, on July 29, featuring a 250kW, 2650 m2 solar façade. With an annual generating capacity of 300MWh the system is expected to reduce 312 tons of carbon emissions each year.
Japan and cutting-edge technology have long gone hand in hand and therefore it is no surprise that Kyocera’s latest solar innovation, the Eco-Shell, is being launched in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Industry analyst NanoMarkets has published a new report claiming that revenues in the building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) product market will surpass US$11 billion by 2016. In addition to this fivefold increase in revenue, the paper, titled “Building Integrated Photovoltaics Markets, 2011” states that capacity within the sector will also rise from 343MW to 3.6GW during the same time period.
Gebäude-Solarsysteme (GSS) and Day4 Energy mutually revealed that GSS has successfully completed the integration of Day4’s process equipment technology into its existing production line. GSS plans to start manufacturing and delivering commercial volume shipments of its solar modules using Day4’s DNA technology by the first week of July. All upgrades to GSS’s module production facility were completed by Day4 Energy’s engineering team in June.
Suntech Power’s Just-Roof building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) solution has been approved by French certification body CEIAB (Comité d’Evaluation de l’Intégration au Bâti). CEIAB is France’s official evaluation committee for all BIPV products, and its endorsement sees Just Roof gain eligibility for the country’s highest available feed-in-tariff.
Pythagoras Solar has won the GE ecomagination Challenge for its Photovoltaic Glass Unit (PVGU) window technology. The company fended off competition from nearly 5,000 other entrants to win the award, which recognises the most promising innovations in the field of building-integrated energy technology.
The Tata Steel and Dyesol development partnership has produced the world’s largest dye-sensitized photovoltaic module. Manufactured at Tata Steel’s Shotton site in North Wales, the module is over three metres in length and approximately one square metre in area. This unique achievement represents an important step towards the development of large-scale microgeneration capability within building infrastructure.
