The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) has awarded the No.1 spot on its 2012 Solar Scorecard to Trina Solar, the company has announced. In its third year, the SVTC Scorecard system is aimed at improving PV manufacturers' social performance and environmental awareness of the impact of their manufacturing processes and practices.
Molybdenum, commonly used as the back-contact material in CIGS solar cells, has been the subject of an in-depth study by sputtering target manufacturer Plansee, working in collaboration with TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Plansee’s results, presented at the ICMCTF Conference, identified the process errors and defect types present in molybdenum thin films that can have a detrimental effect on electrical conductivity.
Fraunhofer ISE recently confirmed that Kaneka and imec’s six-inch, semi-square, heterojunction silicon solar cell has a certified power conversion efficiency of 22.68%. The solar cell has an electroplated copper contact grid on top of a transparent oxide layer, which essentially replaces the traditional silver screen printing and is said to lead to higher efficiencies with lower manufacturing costs.
The inevitable fall-out from last month’s US Dept. of Commerce ruling against the import of Chinese solar products is now measurable in numbers, as the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) has revealed details of import figures for April. With US Customs and Border protection closely monitoring all imports to prevent companies dodging the anti-subsidy duties, imports in April came to US$70.7 million, down 66% compared to the previous month’s US$206 million.
IBC Solar has signed an agreement with South Korean chemical company LG Chem that will see the development of advanced lithium-ion storage solutions for solar energy. As a result of this collaboration, IBC has added to its power storage systems range with the new IBC SolStore 6.3 Li battery.
Solectria Renewables has announced that a 1MW PV installation equipped with its inverters has been commissioned by the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors to provide energy to the Calle Real Campus. The installation is further equipped with 4,500 SolarWorld modules. EPC services provider Endelos Energy and the Santa Barbara County agreed to only use American-made products for the PV array.
Q-Cells has selected Satcon to provide 30MW of its Equinox Prism Platform solutions to two Californian PV projects, the company has announced. The sites are owned and operated by Californian utilities.
Chint/Astroenergy has completed a 50MW PV plant in Bulgaria, the company has announced. Once in operation, the plant will generate 1,858.548,000kWh of energy over a span of 25 and the energy will be fed into the local grid under a fixed FiT.
At Intersolar Europe, PV-Kraftwerker will be showcasing “Momo”, its assembly robot that can build open area solar parks. The robot is able to mount PV modules onto support racks through a gripper system, sensors and a 3-D camera, which also catches any aberration from the standard and corrects and adjusts deviations. The robot has no trouble covering large distances and the modules rarely suffer breakages on any sort of terrain, as PV-Kraftwerker’s Eberhard Schulz mentioned.
Delta-T Services will be showcasing the SPN1 Sunshine Pyranometer at this year’s Intersolar Europe. The instrument is an important research device for PV developers because it measures both, global and diffuse radiation as well as sunshine state in the same instrument and can detect and identify the most efficient sites for PV installations.
