EnterSolar has finished a 228kW solar PV system for Ontel Productions New Jersey headquarters. The rooftop system was officially placed into service in December 2011 and takes advantage of several renewable energy incentives, including the Section 48 Investment Tax Credit, the PSE&G Solar Loan Program and the Bonus Depreciation benefits for solar projects.
Mage Solar revealed that it had opened a logistics centre in Dagenham, located near London, in order to better serve the British solar market. The company looks to the new site to deliver its PV system components to its installation partners at a more efficient speed. Mage Solar has had a sales team in the United Kingdom since the beginning of 2011 and noted that it continues to expand its network of installation partners.
REC Solar and KIUC recently held a kick-off meeting with Homestead Community Development Corporation (HCDC) in order to initiate the next steps of the 12MW solar project the companies will be installing on Hawaiian Homelands in Anahola on the northeast side of Kauai. REC Solar won the contract for the project in December, marking it as the second utility-scale project the company has developed for KIUC.
Zep Solar advised that three of its latest PV continuing education courses had been approved and registered by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners’ (NABCEP), giving NABCEP certified PV installers the option to receive continuing education units for training on Zep’s mounting and grounding products. The approved Zep curriculum includes a two-hour “Zep System: Design and Installation” course and a four-hour intermediate and six-hour advanced course options.
Westinghouse Solar’s latest white paper, The Revolution in Solar Power Mounting Systems, takes a look at the financial, engineering and customer benefits of rooftop solar power systems with integrated racking, wiring and grounding, including those units from Westinghouse and Zep Solar. The publication details how the standard in rooftop solar system installations has been a field assembly process that uses different “components that must be sourced, kitted, and assembled onsite,” which leads to a high assembly cost.
Under a new partnership between eIQ Energy and Boots on the Roof, eIQ Energy has supplied a dozen of its vBoost converter modules to the Boots on the Roof solar training program. The partnership was initiated in January and will see eIQ’s technology featured in the school’s commercial PV construction training program as well as its commercial PV design course.
According to Solar Novus Today, the Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE) of Italy will allow TÜV Rheinland to conduct design qualification and type approval testing on PV modules and systems. The organizations noted that the agreement specifically calls for the testing of crystalline silicon flat-plate PV modules according to the IEC 61215 standard, thin-film flat plate PV modules under the IEC 61646 standard and CPV modules and assemblies in compliance with the IEC 62108 standard.
SunPower and Salt River Project (SRP) recently announced that they will be developing a 1MW solar PV plant at Arizona State University’s (ASU) Polytechnic campus in Mesa, Arizona. The organizations advised that this will be the first commercial deployment of SunPower’s C7 Tracker technology. SunPower will lead the engineering and construction of the plant while additionally operating and maintaining it upon completion.
China-based Long Energy has assumed PowerGuard Specialty Insurance Services’ PowerClip extended warranty protection for its solar panels. The PowerGuard service offers a 25-year, non-cancellable quality and performance guarantee solution that supports a manufacturer’s own warranty terms. The terms are not only non-cancellable, but they survive insolvency and bankruptcy with third-party rights to the policy available.
CVD Equipment advised that its new orders in 2011 totaled over US$36 million, 44% more than the US$25 million received in 2010. New orders in the CVD/FN division of production and research systems was approximately US$30.5 million, an increase, according to CVD, of 45% compared to 2010 order levels. CVD expects high demand to continue in 2012.
