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Nautilus Solar Energy advised that it had completed a financing agreement with De Lage Landen in order to fund a minimum of US$25 million of Nautilus Solar Energy installations through key US markets in 2012. The funding will see several megawatts of PV installations completed in Florida, California and the northeast.
Just hours after Solar Millennium announced that it had begun the process of filing insolvency proceedings at the district court in Fuerth, Germany, Solar Trust America, in which Solar Millennium holds a majority of the equity, issued a statement about the company’s immediate future.
T-Solar has signed three loan agreements worth US$145 million to finance two PV plants in Peru. The systems, which have a combined capacity of 44MW, are the first large-scale solar installations in Latin America and will cover 206 hectares of land in the Arequipa region of southern Peru.
Unable to secure closure on a previous deal to sell its solar project pipeline to solarhybrid and investor funding for its planned expansion of its Ibersol parabolic trough power plant project, Solar Millennium has filed for the opening of insolvency proceedings at the district court in Fuerth, Germany. The module supply deal between First Solar and solarhybrid becomes suspect.
Announced in October, Solar Millennium no longer believes negotiations for its US project pipeline with solarhybrid will be concluded before the end of the year. The companies had hoped to reach an agreement by the end of November.
Having halted PV module manufacturing operations in 2009, BP plans to exit the sector entirely with offloading its stake in projects said to be in the region of 158MW, according to Bloomberg. Approximately 100 employees will be affected and ends over 40-years of involvement in the PV industry.
As part of its business strategy to minimise its direct manufacturing exposure, Conergy has sold its PV inverter subsidiary, voltwerk electronics to the Bosch Group, heralding its move into the market. Bosch intends to integrate voltwerk electronics operations into Bosch Power Tec. Financial terms were not disclosed. voltwerk electronics employed approximately 100 workers with turnover of around €68 million in 2010.
Canadian Solar’s subsidiary, Canadian Solar Solutions (CSSI), executed a sales agreement with TransCanada, which will see TransCanada buy 86MW of Canadian Solar’s project portfolio for nearly CAN$470 million. The agreement calls for CSSI to provide TransCanada with nine fully-operational and commissioned utility-scale solar projects across the Ontario province. The projects are all anticipated to begin service between late 2012 and mid-2013.
It was revealed that Google recently partnered with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) to invest in Recurrent Energy’s portfolio of PV facilities serving the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). VentureBeat reports that the investment totals US$94 million, which was financed through a combination of debt and equity from Google and KKR’s newly formed SunTap Energy.
Another long-term take-or-pay wafer sales contract with an unidentified customer has been announced by REC. Overcapacity and the collapse in wafer prices has forced many PV cell and module manufacturers to restructure and or cancel supply agreements to better reflect market dynamics over the last couple of years. REC said that it accepted the latest contract cancellation with compensation to the company of approximately €22 million.
