With an expected Energy Feed-In Act for renewable energies due soon in Turkey, PV equipment supplier Schmid noted at a workshop it hosted with its Turkish sales partner, PV Teknik, that the country was poised to soon start producing PV modules for the domestic market. Turkey was claimed to have the best potential for solar energy after Spain, due to its geographical location and climate conditions.
Bosch Solar Energy and Linde Nippon Sanso (LNS), a company of The Linde Group, have signed a new gas supply deal that now includes the new c-Si solar cell plant. LNS will supply the 630MW facility cluster with bulk silane and ammonia gas. Linde is the main gas technology supplier to all of the production lines.
Fluor Corp. has won the engineering services contract for a new 50MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Badajoz, Spain. Spanish energy firm Elecnor is owner of the project, which will use parabolic trough technology. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed. Fluor will provide detailed engineering and other associated services for the project.
An Ulvac turnkey a-Si thin film customer, China Solar Power (CSP), will build its third production plant with an investment from the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). The 200MW nameplate capacity facility will be the first of its kind in at the Suzhou Industrial Park. SIP was established in the mid-1990s as a joint venture between Suzhou and Singapore. The cost of the new plant was put at US$180 million.
With only a handful of major solar-related manufacturers having released fourth-quarter and full-year financial results, a picture is already emerging as to the health and wealth and 2010 trends for the solar industry. Having reported financial results and conducted its quarterly conference call last Thursday, JA Solar gave a lot of data points to digest about capacity ramps but also importantly, average selling prices (ASPs) for 2010.
Robust customer demand for solar cells and OEM modules from JA Solar means that the company cannot meet 2010 bookings without increasing capacity. The company is targeting an increase in nameplate cell capacity to 1.1GW in 2010, which will be primarily for its ‘high-efficiency-enabled’ cells, using selective emitter technology. OEM modules and ingot production will also ramp in 2010.
Having announced plans last November to expand solar wafer capacity to 1GW in 2010, ReneSola has backed this up with a new supply agreement to provide 600MW of solar modules to an unidentified but described as a ‘major global solar company.’ The new contract calls for ReneSola to provide 200MW of solar modules annually for three years with shipments starting in 2010. This is ReneSola’s first major OEM contract.
Business partners in ‘String Ribbon’ licensee Sovello, which include Evergreen Solar, Q-Cells and REC Group, have agreed key terms and conditions and signed a declaration of intent with an unidentified investor for the sale of the struggling solar module producer. Sovello said in a statement that the investor had been interested in purchasing the company for some time. The Management Board expects the transaction to be completed in the first quarter of 2010.
String Ribbon solar module producer, Evergreen Solar expects its nameplate capacity to reach 170MW in 2010, based primarily on its Wuhan, China facility coming online as expected, this summer. The 100MW plant, operated by Jiawei Solarchina is expected to ramp to 20 to 25MW of capacity per quarter in early 2011 and produce a wafer for about US$0.45 per watt and a panel for around US$1.25 per watt. However, with a high cash burn rate for the loss making manufacturer, the 70%-plus capacity increase will require the company to raise more money, according to Mike El-Hillow, Evergreen Solar’s COO and CFO in a conference call to discuss fourth quarter financial results.
Product Briefing Outline: mbj-Solutions have introduced an offline solar module inspection system designed for the use in the factory and laboratory. The ‘SolarModule EL-basic’ is an advanced offline electroluminescence inspection system. Different module sizes, laminated and not laminated can be inspected without any extensive adjustment work. The design of the system combines usability, high resolution, short tact time and fast return on investment in one machine.
