Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news
Fab and Facilities
Opinion
SolarWorld expands production capacity in the U.S.
SolarWorld is honouring its plans to expand production capacity in the U.S. with the announcement of a new manufacturing facility to be built at the Hillsboro site in Oregon. The facility will increase the production of crystalline solar power modules to an expected capacity of 350MW by 2011.
News
Voltaix will open new manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania
Voltaix, the provider of materials to enhance the performance of semiconductor chips and solar cells, has announced its plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. The plant will be constructed at the Portland Industrial Park in Upper Mt. Bethel Township.
Linde merges customer services operations at new facility
Linde North America has combined its electronics and specialty gases customer services operations in a new facility located in Stewartsville, New Jersey. The consolidation is part of the integration of Spectra Gases, which Linde purchased in 2006.
Applied Materials opens expanded PV, FPD manufacturing center in Taiwan
Applied Materials announced last week that it has opened the newly expanded Tainan Manufacturing Center in southern Taiwan, a nearly 15,000 square-meter facility that the company says will enhance its capability to serve thin-film solar photovoltaic and flat-panel display (FPD) customers in Asia. The center employs approximately 150 people and is expected to build and ship about 100 new plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and physical vapor deposition (PVD) production systems this year
SMA Solar starts Ontario subsidiary, plans to build PV inverter factory in province
The lure of Ontario’s attractive subsidies, especially for firms with “local content,” has enticed another solar company to set up manufacturing and expand operations in the Canadian province. SMA Solar Technology has started a subsidiary for production, sales, and service in Ontario, with plans to invest €5-10 million for the buildout of a 500MW capacity photovoltaic inverter factory.
Hoku gets second tranche of Tianwei loan, now plans to demo polysilicon reactor in April
Polysilicon producer Hoku Materials has received the second tranche of $30 million for a total loan amount of $50 million from Tianwei New Energy Holdings, a vertically integrated solar manufacturer based in China. Hoku also confirmed that it had received $4 million in polysilicon prepayments on March 1 from Solarfun Power, pursuant to the PV company's sales agreement with Hoku.
Yingli receives government delegation visit
A senior government delegation visited Yingli Green Energy's headquarters in Baoding on March 5 and 6, 2010. Attendees included Jiang Zemin, former president of China, Zeng Peiyan, former vice premier of China, and Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Administration of China.
Technical Papers
Electric power glitches and PV manufacturing: SEMI standards to increase yield and reduce costs
PV manufacturers can quickly reduce their costs, and increase their yields, by using SEMI standards that were originally designed to help semiconductor fabs deal with power glitches and power costs. SEMI, the global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries, has two well-established electric power standards that could prove especially useful for PV manufacturing: SEMI F47, which helps equipment deal with power disturbances, and SEMI E6, which helps users understand how much electric power is used in their recipes. This article provides a method of lowering costs and increasing yield by applying these standards in the PV manufacturing industry.
Scaling up: aiding solar manufacturers using lessons learned from past high-tech industry scale-ups
As demand for solar products prompts producers to scale up their manufacturing operations, CH2M HILL's advanced technology manufacturing experts consider some of the most significant issues related to factory expansion. This article consists of the direct experiences these experts have gained from the scale-up activity in other industries with technological similarity to solar - most notably from the semiconductor and flat panel realms.
Product Briefings
New Product: Schneider Electric offers active energy management architecture from plant to plug
Product Briefing Outline: Schneider Electric is now offering an approach to create intelligent energy management systems under the EcoStruxure banner. These systems are simplified, save money, and most importantly, reduce waste by enabling a guaranteed compatibility between the management of power, white space, process and machines, building control, and security. With EcoStruxure, businesses can anticipate better results and improvements in operations through systematic energy visibility and real time control of any energy usage.
New Product: Horiba’s SEC-N100 Series digital MFC handles PV manufacturers gas flow requirements
Product Briefing Outline: Fluid control specialist, Horiba, has introduced a new range of mass flow controllers (MFC) competitively priced to fit the economic and production needs of the photovoltaic manufacturing sector. Manufactured in Japan, under strict quality conditions by HoribaStec, the SEC-N100 Series digital mass flow controller reliably controls the flow of process gases and cleaning gases. Multigas and multirange functions allow the user to configure the desired gas and flow range to increase flexibility and reduce overall costs, for example by decreasing flow controller inventory. Dedicated software makes this easy to do without removing the mass flow controller from the gas panel.
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