The Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Germany was on site with IBC Solar to celebrate the groundbreaking of the company’s new Sukow Solar Park. Set to be built across 76.6-acres of the former Sukow landfill, the 11MWp solar installation is expected to be completed in August and use 48,000 PV modules to generate 10,500,000kWh of solar electricity every year.
Solarion hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for its CIGS thin-film solar cell and module factory in Saxon, Germany. The event was attended by company and state officials who noted that this is the company’s first production facility for mass manufacturing of its thin-film PV technology. The €40 million project will house a 129,167 square foot production facility on a 7.4-acre site at the Zwenkau-South industrial park, with a 20MW production volume at its inception in 2012.
San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has signed two more 25-year power purchase agreements (PPA) with Soitec Solar Development, which, this time around, will total 125MW of solar energy produced in SDG&E’s service area. Just last month, the utility signed contracts with Soitec subsidiaries for three solar projects in the San Diego area that amounted to 30MW of solar PV energy. SDG&E stressed that the three previous contracts were separate contracts from those announced today.
The Qwest Field Event Center, home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, is currently undergoing a “green transformation” with the installation of a rooftop solar PV system. Considered the largest rooftop solar array in Washington to date, the Qwest Field installation will have 3,750 CIGS solar panels manufactured by Solyndra producing over 830,000kWh of solar electricity per year and offset 21% of the Event Center’s annual utility costs.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has pledged US$25 million towards the US-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) over the next five years. The R&D center is part of US President Obama and India Prime Minister Singh’s Partnership to Advance Clean Energy initiative that was revealed in November 2010.
OPEL Solar International was designated the exclusive worldwide supplier of solar trackers for Grape Solar. This marks OPEL’s first exclusive supply agreement with a PV panel manufacturer and supplier. Leon Pierhal, OPEL Solar’s CEO, indicated, "Grape has an impressive product line of high efficiency PV panels from both China and US manufacturing locations, with plans for additional expansion to Ontario, Canada. We expect that Grape's close alliances with leading solar integrators and engineering firms will greatly enhance OPEL's sales channels and, that Grape Solar will become a key supplier of PV panels to OPEL's tracker customers."
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, is spearheading the Open Solar Outdoors Test Field (OSOTF), a study that aims to investigate how diverse weather conditions effect a solar panels performance. eIQ Energy has signed on to help OSOTF by contributing its vBoost DC-to-DC converter modules on a solar array. The project is being conducted at a grid-connected solar panel testing facility that constantly measures the energy output of 95 different types of solar panels while relating their performance to meteorological data.
GT Solar International has received orders for its DSS multicrystalline growth furnaces totaling US$84.3 million. Orders were place by both existing and new customers including Nantong Zongyi New Material and Inner Mongolia Zhong Huan Solar Material. The orders will be included in GT’s backlog for the quarter, which ends on July 2.
SunPower released its first quarter 2011 financial results today confirming its earlier suspicion that Q1 revenue would be affected by Italy’s project delays. Revenue for Q1 2011 came in at US$451.4 million, a 30% year-over-year increase, but a 52% drop from Q4 2010’s US$937.1 million. Gross margin was finalized at 19.6% GAAP, compared to Q4’s 25.4%.
Wattner has acquired a 9.2MW solar system, which will be constructed across five of Germany-based Opel’s rooftops. Wattner secured EWT SolServ for the construction and installation of the project, which will use nearly 40,000 solar modules and 500 inverters. The energy produced from the project will be fed directly into Opel’s corporate grid.
