Alex Vanderpol has been appointed as Astronergy’s general counsel, a role in which he will oversee all the legal operations for the company. Vanderpol has practiced corporate and commercial law and worked for various organizations based in Asia including the Singapore and Shanghai branches of AMB AMRO Bank and Solarfun Power Holdings, Hanwha Solar One, in Shanghai.
SunSi Energies advised that it has continued moving forward with plans to raise capital in order to fund future company expansions and acquisitions. The past three months have seen the company gather around US$5 million through cash received from equity sales of US$635,000, common stock subscription commitments of US$1,750,000 and the conversion of US$2.7 million in redeemable stock to common equity by its 40% equity partner, Wendeng facility.
CleanPath has revealed that its plans to invest US$800 million towards the development of 1,000MW of large-scale solar PV projects in North America over the next five years. The company will manage two revolving facilities in its investment by targeting large-scale solar projects that range in size from 5MW to over 100MW.
M+W Group has established a new subsidiary in Dresden: M+W Integrated Solutions, which will cater to the high-tech service business in Europe. The new subsidiary will support its customers with services such as plant reconstruction and extension, installation, commissioning and service for high-tech equipment and certification and acceptance testing.
As the 37th IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference (PVSC) gets underway in Seattle, Alta Devices plans to discuss how it achieved record cell efficiencies of 27.6% last year as well as its overall best efficiency rating of 28.2%. Both results were verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with Alta disclosing that the high efficiencies they reached were due in part to a new discovery involving the light emitted and collected by a solar cell.
The 37th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC) at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington June 19 -24, is ready to welcome the cream of the PV crop. The final program was recently announced with presentations during the week focusing on 10 technical areas, including crystalline silicon technologies, organic PV and space technologies. Over 1,200 technical abstracts from around the world were submitted for consideration, marking a new record for IEEE PVSC.
Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering received a generous gift from an anonymous alumnus and his wife totaling US$1.3 million. The funding will go towards the launch of the Latimer Engineering Scholars Program, which beginning in the 2011 – 2012 academic year will sponsor teaching and research in the sustainable energy field.
Solon and UniSource Energy Services (UES) have agreed to develop a 1.22MW solar PV system on six acres of land owned by the Kingman Unified School District (KUSD) and located behind La Senita Elementary School in Arizona. The companies state that this will be the largest single physical PV system on school property in the state with UES owning and operating the system while Solon takes the lead on the engineering, procurement and construction services.
Former managing board member Scott Landstrom has been selected by the Direct Grid Technologies board as the company’s new CEO. Guy Ward, the previous Direct Grid CEO, will take on the role of executive chairman. A 25-year veteran of senior executive leadership, Landstrom previously worked at Lam Research as the VP of global field operations with prior executive experience coming from his time as president of Volex.
SolarWorld’s extended workmanship warranty, which insures the workmanship of its solar panels, has been increased from five years to 10 years with a retroactive activation for all panels delivered since January 1, 2011. The company revealed the warranty extension as it launched its Sunmodule Plus solar panels, which feature mono- and poly-crystalline panels.
