JinkoSolar has announced that it has connected China Guangdong Nuclear Solar Energy Development’s 18MW PV power plant to China’s grid. The plant, located in Dunhuang, Gansu Province in west China, consists of 76,000 of JinkoSolar’s modules on a plot area of 400,000m2.
MEMC has issued a statement of clarification in regard to its recent release that appeared to claim that its parent company, SunEdison, has plans to establish solar projects in Japan in the near future. Media reports’ assumptions that there are concrete plans for Japanese projects have been refuted by MEMC, which cites “uncertain project economics” and a lack of government incentives for the company’s ambiguity on its plans for the country.
Dow Solar is taking its Powerhouse Solar Shingles to the US, as it has announced that it has named three authorized sellers of its BIPV roofing solution in Colorado. Academy Roofing, B&M Roofing and D&D Roofing will be supplying the solar technology to the homeowners of Colorado, while Dow Solar has plans to roll out the product across the country.
Yongfei Chen, who has served as acting CFO for China Sunergy since November 2010, has accepted the role of CFO for the company. The role, which comes into effect immediately, takes the form of an initial three-year contract. He accepted the acting CFO role following the resignation from the post by Siegfried Yi Chou Hsu in November 2010 for personal reasons.
Construction has begun of the initial stage of the 2MW CPV solar plant in Mildura, Victoria. The 2MW plant will serve as a form of demonstration facility for what the developers are planning could eventually be a 100MW solar farm by 2016. As equipment supplier to the facility, Solar Systems will provide its "Dense Array" CPV technology which is said to use triple-junction solar cells to yield a 40% conversion efficiency.
The government of Qinghai Province's Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Hainan has teamed up with GSF Capital to construct a 1GW solar power plant in inland Qinghai. Renewables investment firm GSF Capital signed an MOU with the government body recently for the development of the plant, the cost of which was undisclosed.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Riyadh will be equipped with the city’s first solar rooftop plant using Conergy’s PV modules. The 200kW installation will be located on the roofs of towers A and C in the KAFD, reducing the city’s dependence on oil-generated electricity and bringing the city closer to its goal of becoming a recipient of the ‘LEED Gold’ certification awarded by the US Green Building Council.
IDC Energy Insights has released its findings for the PV module market over the next four years. The firm’s encouraging figures are forecasting that on a global scale, PV module shipments will rise from their current 22.7GW level (2011) to 43.8GW in 2015.
Approximately half of China’s PV manufacturing firms have ceased production, according to a report on the Chinese newspaper Guangzhou Daily and as cited by Digitimes. Chronic oversupply and massive price drops would appear to have nudged the lower-performing China-based manufacturers over the edge, with the solar energy division of CSG Holding’s research suggesting that half have stopped production, around 30% are at half their production capability and 20% are at pains to maintain their current levels of production.
An attempt to regain lost revenue has led to MEMC Electronic Materials’ decision to cut its global workforce by 20%, or over 1,300 employees. Among other activities, the company will also idle its 6,000MT Merano, Italy polysilicon facility, which it says it will close unless “dramatic feedstock, power and other cost reductions are achieved” in the near future.
