Mark Osborne

CIS thin-film manufacturer, Solar Frontier, is touting a new lightweight PV module for the residential rooftop market, primarily in Japan.

US-based PV module supplier, Westinghouse Solar is teetering on the brink of insolvency, recent SEC filings reveal.

A deal that would see Conergy’s sales operations sold and split from its PV module and mounting systems manufacturing operations has been signed between US-based financial investor, Kawa Capital Management, Conergy and the preliminary insolvency administrator of Conergy.

Inline measurement systems start-up, ACT Aurora Control Technologies said it had entered into a new evaluation agreement for its Decima tool.

Gehrlicher Solar America has held a groundbreaking ceremony for a 3MW PV power plant being built at a landfill site near the town of Scituate, Massachusetts.

Start-up, Solar3D, has claimed the use of an unspecified “thinner” silicon wafer substrate in prototyping its technology has achieved improved cell efficiency of 10% above its 25% cell efficiency claimed in 2012. The results have not been verified by a third party.

Despite a long list of thin-film company failures and retrenchments over the last few years, several start-ups continue to tout their technology offerings ahead of actual commercialisation.

The SCHMID Group has delivered its first TinPad system for volume production to an unidentified customer.

Taiwan-based TSMC Solar has pushed its CIGS thin-film module efficiency to 15.7%, up from 15.1%, only four months ago.

First of all, congratulations to ReneSola for being included in Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) tiering system for PV module makers – joining the often used “Tier 1” category.