Mark Osborne

Applied Materials can't seem to leave the solar equipment business alone at the moment, as it continues its acquisition trail. The latest is Baccini S.p.A for a cool $330 million in greenbacks.

Solaicx has officially opened its new monocrystalline silicon ingotsand wafer manufacturing plant in Portland, Oregon. The new plant has aninitial capacity of 32MW per annum with a projected capacity of 180MWof silicon ingots and wafers per annum.

MEMC Electronic Materials has entered into a 10-year definitive agreement valued at between $7 and $8 billion to supply solar grade silicon wafers to Conergy at pre-determined prices. The supply deal will start in the third quarter of 2008, MEMC said.

China Nuvo Solar Energy has teamed with Pioneer Materials to establisha pilot development and manufacturing operation in PMI’s Chengdu,Sichuan, China facility located in Chengdu’s West High Tech developmentzone.

As rumors go, this is not as far-fetched as it seems!

WACKER CHEMIE AG and SCHOTT Solar have announced plans to jointlyinvest €370 million through 2012 in expanding multicrystalline siliconwafer production at facilities in Jena and Alzenau, Germany for solarcell production that is planned to generate one gigawatt/year by 2012. The joint venture would become one of the world´s five largestsolar-wafer manufacturers, according to the companies

The continued demand for polysilicon coming primarily from the solarcell industry has led to WACKER’s starting ‘stage 8’ of polysiliconproduction expansion at its Burghausen, Germany site by an additional7,000 metric tons to a total of 21,500 metric tons per year.

An old automotive saying that well-built vehicles by Ford Motor Co.keep on going many years after competitors’ models have been scrappedcan now be applied to old Ford assembly plants!

Thin-film silicon solar photovoltaic module manufacturer Signet Solar has announced plans to ultimately produce 1 gigawatt (GW) in annual production of solar modules over the next ten years at a new plant to be built in India at an estimated final cost of approximately $2 billion U.S. dollars.

BP Solar has started construction of a 300MW solar cell plant in TresCantos, Madrid, Spain. Phase 1 of the new plant will have an annualcell capacity of 55MW with a total planned capacity of 300MW. The firstline expected to be fully operational in 3Q07.