Last Thursday, 31 of Europe’s finest football clubs, and Arsenal, entered the draw for the group stage of this season’s Champions League. Commonly regarded as the most prestigious football competition in the world, between now and next May it will be the battle ground for not just the finest footballers on the continent, but also some of the world’s leading commercial brands, including Yingli Green Energy, Q-Cells and JinkoSolar.
Polysilicon spot prices have fallen considerably over the last year as new capacity was introduced and weak demand in the first half of the year reduced demand, especially from Tier 2 and Tier 3 PV module manufacturers. There was a period of real concern from higher-cost producers as poly spot prices fell to the US$50/Kg range, with fear that they would fall further if demand didn’t pick up in Q2.
The irony of this won’t go unnoticed. The natural disaster and its repercussions leading to the re-examination of what was largely accepted as a ‘clean’ renewable energy are hitting the headlines.
Having listened to more quarterly conference calls from listed companies than I care to mention, two contrasting characteristics are worth mentioning. In the PV industry, players such as First Solar get star treatment. With so many analysts on the call, questions are limited to one and no follow-up. At times, even with that policy in place, not all analysts get a chance to pose a question. However, the reverse can also happen.
New wind power capacity installed in the EU last year reached 9.3GW, according to the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). Even though the solar sector seems sluggish in declaring its installed figures, just the official forecast numbers coming from Germany, Italy, France and Spain alone would result in over 10GW of PV installations in 2010.
It seems such an obvious thing that solar PV should be ubiquitous within ±35° latitude around the equator—otherwise know as the Sunbelt. It also has 75% of the world's population and 40% of the global electricity demand. Yet few actual installations to date are within this region.
After a relatively quiet Monday, the second day of the EU PVSEC conference in Valencia certainly ‘hotted up’, in more than one sense of the word. With temperatures hitting 28°C, but feeling more like the high 30s, the air conditioning and vastness of the Feria Valencia are welcome as the suited and booted attendees meander their way around the eight halls and the conference centre.
Local press reports in France have pointed towards feed-in tariff cuts for solar power installations. The French government is expected to follow the trend in solar slashing to keep its policy in line with the massive price drops apparent across the industry.
The post-mortem has already begun on the news that Applied Materials would stop selling its turnkey ‘SunFab’ thin-film manufacturing lines to new customers and retrench to service and support existing customers in the short-term, while reducing but not eliminating R&D on a-Si process technology.Apart form Greentech Media’s ‘I told you so' article, the best post-mortem analysis so far comes from Ed Korczynski, a well-known semiconductor technology journalist with credentials that include MIT, emiconductor equipment suppliers and a stint working for none other than Applied Materials.
As of July 1, 2010, the amount of applications for photovoltaic systems installed under the micro-generation feed-in tariff in Ontario, Canada, reached 16,000. The majority of these applications have been for ground-mounted systems and thus, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) has designed a FiT cut for any systems of this kind of 10kW or less, to stop the pressure this will place on tax payers.
