A new equipment investment cycle for PV manufacturers is boosting quarterly sales for Roth & Rau. New order intake in the first quarter increased 22.5% to €55.8 million, compared to €45.5 million in the previous quarter. Due to long lead times in its project business, the first-quarter revenue continued to be affected by the poor order situation in the second and third quarters of 2009, resulting in revenue declining to €35.32 million.
Distributed solar power harvesting start-up SolarEdge has seen a rapid adoption of its integrated module power harvesting technology in France through one of the top three residential integrators in the country, Solelux Toiture. According to SolarEdge, several hundred of its systems have already been installed this year and the company expects approximately 3,000 to be installed by year's end, equivalent to 10MWp. The firm claims that its power harvesting technology can boost solar energy system production by as much as 25%.
Crystalline-silicon module manufacturer, GlobalWatt had chosen KUKA Systems, advanced liquid encapsulant line for its new plant in Saginaw, Michigan. The initial semi-automated line is expected to cost under $10M and be operational by November 2010 with production to begin in the first quarter of 2011. GlobalWatt has a plan of a total capacity over the next three to five years of 500MW in module manufacturing.
An exclusive agreement with Sixtron Advanced Materials will allow Air Liquide to offer advanced coating materials that tackle light-induced degradation (LID) problems for crystalline-silicon solar cells, which compliments Air Liquide’s own advanced precursor materials. The Silexium process solution combines proprietary precursor molecules with Sixtron’s ‘SunBox’ gas generation system to deposit solar cell films.
Returning to profitability (US$11.8 million) in the first quarter of 2010 was only one aspect in a busy quarter for ReneSola. Revenue of US$206.6 million was reached on record quarterly shipments of 242.4MW (12.6% growth QoQ), both exceeding previous guidance. ReneSola now expects total solar product shipments of 1.0GW to 1.1GW, up from the previous total solar product shipment estimate of 900MW to 950MW. Average cell conversion efficiency rates on monocrystalline and multicrystalline wafers reached 17.4% and 16%, respectively, up from 16% and 15%, respectively. The average amount of power per watt generated by each wafer has increased 5% to 8%, according to the company.
Screen printing processes are a key battle ground for both equipment suppliers and solar cell producers as greater emphasis is placed on improving cell efficiencies. Applied Materials has claimed that its ‘Esatto Technology’ is expected to reach a new milestone with more than 2GW of annual cell manufacturing capacity in the next few months. Applied said that its customers in China, Taiwan and Europe have demonstrated 0.46% absolute cell efficiency gains with its technology, and up to a 14% reduction in consumption of silver printing paste.
Product Briefing Outline: KUKA has introduced the ACS 600 process tool, which is an advanced Cell Stringer system. The system has an output of 750 cells per hour and can process both polycrystalline and monocrystalline cells, from 160 µ to 220 µ in thickness, with two or three bus bars. The alignment accuracy range is less than ±0.2 mm, while the breakage rate of the cells is less than 0.5%.
Phoenix Solar has won tenders for two new solar power plants using First Solar’s CdTe thin-film modules from SWT Stadtwerke Trier, the city utility for Trier, Germany. The first project in Bitburg will start construction this week and employ 72,000 modules for an installed capacity of 5.6MW. The second project will use 28,000 First Solar modules, generating a peak power of around 2.2MW, will be assembled in Fell. Phoenix Solar has now worked on 11 such projects in the region.
In the grand scheme of things data released by UK utility, npower may seem rather insignificant but is actually a major boost to the realization that photovoltaics in the UK is taking off and that demand is far exceeding expectations just a month after the UK government introduced the first feed-in tariff that parallels other good systems in place in Germany, Italy and France. Confirmed figures given to PV-Tech from the utility meann that a total of 55 PV systems were installed by its installation partner Ecofirst Ltd, since the beginning of April, 2010 when the tariff was introduced.
Product Briefing Outline: GT Solar International has launched the ‘DSS450HP,’ a high performance ingot growth furnace with a thermally optimized, second-generation hot zone for improved throughput while delivering industry-leading crystal quality. Because the DSS450HP has the same dimensions as the DSS450, current users can easily migrate to the new DSS450HP with a field upgrade kit.
