Having listened to more quarterly conference calls from listed companies than I care to mention, two contrasting characteristics are worth mentioning. In the PV industry, players such as First Solar get star treatment. With so many analysts on the call, questions are limited to one and no follow-up. At times, even with that policy in place, not all analysts get a chance to pose a question. However, the reverse can also happen.
McObject’s ‘eXtremeDB’ Fusion embedded database system, a Linux-based high performance embedded database system for solar power optimization, is being integrated with Azuray Technologies' DC-to-DC converters for 'smart' solar modules. Azuray needed a small, fast embedded database management system (DBMS) in its communications gateway but building a DBMS from scratch would be costly and take considerable development time.
New wind power capacity installed in the EU last year reached 9.3GW, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). Even though the solar sector seems sluggish in declaring its installed figures, just the official forecast numbers coming from Germany, Italy, France and Spain alone would result in over 10GW of PV installations in 2010.
Edwards has expanded its iXA family of magnetically-levitated turbomolecular pumps with the introduction of the STP-iXA2206 and STP-iXA3306 pumps. Developed for solar, glass coating, semiconductor and LCD etch applications, the iXA2206/iXA3306 pumps offer performance superior to that offered by earlier iXA family pumps.
Despite the confusion over the GSE’s PV installation figures for 2010, Barclays Capital PV analyst Vishal Shah said in an investors note that no matter what the actual installation figure will be for 2010, it is increasingly likely that the Italian government would have to pay for 6GW worth of subsidies at the 2010 FiT rate.
China’s drive to consolidate its leading position in PV manufacturing has been reinforced with a credit facility offered to JinkoSolar from the Bank of China that could be worth approximately US$7.6 billion over a five-year period.
2BG Srl has extended its product line with the complete automation of bussing soldering process in order to meet the high demand of quality production and throughput. The IC200AR is an in-line system that’s operates as a robotic workstation which solders bus ribbons to solar cell strings for completing the electrical interconnection of the module prior to lamination.
Global PV demand of 18GW in 2011 is being projected by investment bank, Roth Capital Partners. Concerns of major overcapacity in module production exist but estimates bankable module supply is in the 21GW range and would only exceed demand by approximately 18%.
Atlumin Energy has begun fabricating monolithic `barking’ (dog bone) rotary molybdenum sputtering targets for solar thin-film module manufacturing. Barking targets offer superior material utilization, while monolithic targets offer higher density and higher purity than traditionally fabricated targets.
National Semiconductor has released the ‘SolarMagic’ ‘MYPVDATA’ Solar Operations Center (SOC). The software as a service (SaaS) offering helps users analyze data collected from the PV array by delivering information through an easy-to-use web-interface.
