Meyer Burger is buying all the assets of Colorado Springs-based Diamond Wire Technology. The two companies have been cooperating in the marketing and development of diamond wire used for slicing silicon for the photovoltaic industry since 2003. Specifics of the monetary amount of the cash and shares transaction, which is expected to be completed in September, were not disclosed.
Sanyo plans to double solar panel production capacity at its factory in Shiga Prefecture amid surging demand created by the revival of government subsidies for homeowners, according to a news story in the Friday edition of the Nikkei picked up by the Dow Jones newswire.
eSolar has commissioned a 5MW concentrating solar thermal power plant in the Antelope Valley in eastern Los Angeles County. The 24,000-mirror Sierra SunTower, which the company says is the only power tower of its kind currently operating in the U.S., produces electricity for Southern California Edison and can power more than 4000 homes in the area.
Suntech has been selected to supply more than 25,000 crystalline-silicon photovoltaic modules for Recurrent Energy's 5MW municipal solar power project atop the Sunset Reservoir in San Francisco, CA. The modules will be delivered by the fourth quarter of 2009, and the project will be completed in 2010, according to the participants.
Clark Energy Group has been chosen to develop a major solar power project at Fort Irwin, CA--the largest of its kind in U.S. Department of Defense history. Acciona Solar Power will join Clark Energy to help construct and manage the Fort Irwin Solar Energy EUL (enhanced use leasing) project.
Ryne P. Raffaelle has been named director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Most recently, he was academic director for the Golisano Institute for Sustainability and director of the NanoPower Research Laboratory at Rochester Institute of Technology (NY).
FedEx Ground, the small-package shipping unit of FedEx, plans to have installed what it calls the largest rooftop solar-electric system in the United States at its distribution hub in Woodbridge, NJ. The project is the third between a FedEx operating company and BP Solar and the fifth solar power project for FedEx. The 2.42MW photovoltaic power system will employ about 12,400 BP panels across approximately 3.3 acres of rooftop space.
Spire has delivered a turnkey photovoltaic module assembly line to Sova Power, located in Durgapur, West Bengal, India. The semiautomated crystalline-silicon module manufacturing line can produce up to 12MW of PV panels annually and can be expanded as needed in the future.
Up to $11.8 million will be invested by the U.S. Department of Energy in five projects designed to advance the next stage of development of solar energy grid integration systems (SEGIS), as part of a partnership program begun by DOE in 2008. The selected projects focus on the most promising technology advances and include development of intelligent system controls.
XeroCoat has chosen Air Liquide Electronics U.S. to supply the precision chemical delivery systems for XeroCoat’s turnkey antireflective coating platform for glassmakers and end-users in the solar manufacturing industry.
