Julia Chan

With a debt of ¥1.25 trillion (US$16 billion), Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp Corporation has been feeling the weight on its shoulders and will submit an asset report to its banks next month in order to identify any flagging businesses it could sell to raise some finance, Reuters revealed.

IBC Solar’s Turkish subsidiary IBC Solar Yat Ve Tic has announced that it has completed the installation of its Konya PV plant, which it claims is the first grid-connected PV power plant in Turkey.

SunEdison, a US developer of PV projects, has submitted plans to develop two PV plants in Antofagasta in northern Chile adding a total of 72MW of solar capacity to the country, according to the Chilean news site Diario Financiero. One plant will have a capacity of 33.48MW and the other will have 38.59MW.

On August 16, Monier Group signed an agreement to acquire Schott Solar’s InDaX technology for the manufacture of roof-integrated photovoltaics.

ReneSola, a China-based manufacturer of solar modules and wafers, has received certification from the Standards Institution of Israel (SII) for its solar modules — including its Virtus, monocrystalline and multicrystalline series of solar modules.

EDA, the utility responsible for the production, distribution and commercialization of electricity in the nine Azorean islands, and Younicos have teamed up to develop what has been labelled as the world’s first MW-scale renewable energy system based on up to 100% solar and wind power. The system will be installed on Graciosa, an Azorean island.

After entering discussions concerning two PPAs, Corporación Dominicana de Empresas Eléctricas Estatales (CDEEE) has signed on the dotted line enabling the state-owned utility to purchase output from two 58MW PV projects in the Dominican Republic.

Installation of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (Ivanpah SEGS) worth US$2.2 billion is 50% complete, according to an announcement by NRG Energy, Google, BrightSource Energy and construction partner Bechtel.

Ascent Solar Technologies, a developer of flexible thin-film PV modules, has signed an agreement to supply BIPV thin-film laminates to Foxconn. The laminates will be used as part of a pilot installation at Foxconn’s new plant in Zhenzhou City, Henan Province, China. Foxconn is a specialist in the manufacture of electronic devices and produces products such as the iPad and iPhone.

German logistics company Deutsche Bahn’s PV plant located in Wittenberge, Germany, has officially commenced operation. The plant was developed in partnership with India-based Moser Baer Clean Energy and has a total capacity of 3.92MWp.