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Just fifteen miles outside of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam’s Dong Nam Industrial Park, First Solar has begun construction on its four-line PV module manufacturing plant. The ground breaking of First Solar’s US$300 million Vietnamese plant comes one week after the company announced its plans for a second U.S. manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona. Commercial production at the Vietnam site is slated to begin during the second half of 2012.
Under a newly sign deal between Ascent Solar Technologies and Sunload Mobile Solutions, Sunload Mobile will be an authorized dealer of Ascent Solar’s thin-film CIGS modules for EIPV applications in Europe. Ascent Solar anticipates the distribution deal to develop further opportunities in the European off-grid battery charging and portable power markets.
Crystalline-silicon thin-film PV company Ampulse has ordered a cell process development tool from Roth & Rau MicroSystem. The system, scheduled for delivery in the first half of this year, will be installed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Process Development and Integration Laboratory in Golden, CO.
First Solar has selected the location of its second manufacturing center in the United States, and it’s a short drive from the company’s Tempe, AZ, headquarters. A 135-acre site in Mesa that once hosted a General Motors vehicle testing facility will see the creation of a cadmium-telluride thin-film PV module factory, a $300 million capital investment which will feature four production lines and be suitable for future expansion.
Inventux Technologies’ silicon thin-film modules have been newly minted toxic free and environmentally friendly by TÜV Rheinland, who bestowed its restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) certificate on the company’s modules. TÜV Rheinland grants the RoHS certificate after concluding that the products tested are free from toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. Inventux had previously volunteered to have the European RoHS Directive and the German Electrical and Electronic Equipment Act check its modules for toxic free conformity.
Germany’s Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Main-Tauber-Kreis will be home to a new 1.9MW solar park designed, planned and constructed by Gehrlicher Solar. The Heckfeld solar project recently broke ground on the site of a former landfill and will cover over 22 acres of land. First Solar will be providing 23,640 solar modules for the project, which is anticipated to generate 2 million kilowatt-hours of solar electricity per year. SMA has agreed to supply three inverters for the solar project that is planned to reach grid connection by the end of May.
Heliatek has placed an order for two Dr. Schenk SolarInspect roll-to-roll metrology systems that will be placed in its organic photovoltaics (OPV) line located at the company’s Dresden, Germany, facility. Delivery of the two systems is expected to occur midway through this year.
XsunX has signed a contract to supply Globe Future Technology Development with its thin-film production systems. Under the agreement, XsunX will provide Globe Future with its baseline production system and an additional 30MW CIGSolar cell production system.
Delta Energy Systems’ inverter lines have been certified for compatibility with First Solar’s latest FS-Series 2 and FS-Series 3 thin-film modules. First Solar’s System Design and Application certification covers both Delta’s Solivia 2.5, 3.0, 3.3 and 5.0 EU G3 string inverters and its central inverter line.
U|S|E has signed a contract with Solar Frontier to distribute and install its CIS modules. U|S|E will distribute the modules alongside Solar Frontier’s Munich-based sales team and install them in tandem with its own photovoltaic projects.
