Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Oerlikon Group has announced its plans to restructure its finance base with its syndicate banks. The proposal, submitted by Oerlikon to the banks on November 25th, details its plans to defer repayments of the principal amounts of the term loan and revolving credit facility, lower interest charges and conversion of parts of the bank debt to an equity stake in OC Oerlikon.

An agreement between Oerlikon Systems and Meyer Burger to collaborate on the distribution of the recently launched single wafer sputter Solaris system has been signed, which will see the companies market the system on a global scale. This move will see Meyer Burger provide sales and customer support for the system in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas while also paving the way for the two companies to perform collaborative research into anti-reflective coating developments.

A European crystalline solar cell manufacturer has placed a large order for numerous SOLARIS systems. Introduced to the market only weeks ago, the product is set to be delivered within the coming year and will increase the customer's production capacity in North America.

An idled Ford automotive factory near Detroit where T-Birds and Continentals were once built will be redeveloped into one of the largest renewable energy manufacturing parks in the United States. The site will include a micromorph-silicon thin-film solar panel factory equipped by Oerlikon--the company's first such installation in the States. After nine months of discussions with the developers as well as local and state officials, Ford has signed an agreement in principle to sell Wixom assembly plant to energy storage system company Xtreme Power and Clairvoyant Energy, which will be Oerlikon's turnkey PV partner.

The Pramac Group and Oerlikon Solar have announced that production has begun at the Switzerland-based solar module manufacturing facility. Oerlikon Solar's Micromorph end-to-end manufacturing solution enabled Pramac to reach production just seven months after completing its facility.

Oerlikon Solar maintained a comfortable lead in 2008 among among solar turnkey manufacturing line providers in rankings released by VLSI Research. Centrotherm took over the second-place slot from Roth & Rau, which dropped to the third position, while Applied Materials and Schmid Gruppe rounded out the top five.

Oerlikon Solar's KAI 1200 PECVD (Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition) tool, used for the deposition of silicon absorber layers on thin film glass substrates, was acknowledged by expert solar industry judges and online voting as "the best technical product for thin film manufacturing" during the first annual Cell Award ceremonies, which were held during Intersolar in Munich last week.

With amorphous silicon-based thin film technologies under pressure to boost conversion efficiencies to remain competitive with both CdTe and crystalline-based technologies, Oerlikon Solar has claimed that its own pilot production line has now seen full-size ‘Micromorph’ modules (1.4 m2) produce 151 Watts initial power, equivalent to 11% percent initial power conversion efficiency. According to the company, this is a new efficiency record for the technology.

The homegrown Russian solar photovoltaic industry appears on the verge of adding significant manufacturing capacity after news that that the Supervisory Council of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, Rusnano, has approved the corporation's participation in a project to build a million-module-per year, 120-MW panel factory using micromorph-silicon thin-film PV technology provided by Oerlikon Solar.