UK based Foresight Group has signed a joint venture agreement with Quercus Renewable Energy Fund, a division of the Luxembourg-based Quercus Asset Selection, for the expansion of its investments in the Italian solar PV market. Quercus bought a 50% stake in Foresight’s Luxembourg holding Foresight Lux Co 2, which controls 40% of ForVEI, a company that was established by investors with help from Foresight, who were looking to buy interests in Italian PV plants.
SunEdison and KGAL recently finalized an agreement that sees KGAL buying 33MW of solar PV systems from SunEdison, which are located in Italy and Spain. Financial and specific project details were not released, but the recent acquisition comes after KGAL completed a 20MW purchase from SunEdison in Q2 2011.
Array Technologies has shipped its first solar tracking system for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s (SMUD) 50MW PV installation in south Sacramento County, California. The utility-scale project is being developed by Recurrent Energy with Swinerton Renewable Energy acting as the EPC for the installation.
Yingli Green Energy has upgraded existing warranties for both its mono and multicrystalline products as well as introduced a linear-based extended warranty that guarantees power output for each year of a 25-year warranty period. In addition, its limited product warranty has been increased from 5 to 10-years for all of its PV module products and is now inline with the majority of mainstream module manufacturers. The new warranties are valid for PV modules shipped from its plants from October 1st, 2011.
Voltaix has formed a sales and customer support office in Shanghai, China. The company’s Asian business manager, Yun Liu, will be responsible for running the office and also implementing the regional sales and marketing strategy.
Three months ahead of schedule, Wacker Chemie has started ramping its new polysilicon plant in Nünchritz, Germany. The €900 million investment which includes debottlenecking strategies to boost output to 15,000MT per annum has created 500 new jobs at the plant. Full nominal capacity is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2012.
Following the resignation of Greg Ye and Dafeng Shi from its board of directors, Daqo New Energy advised that it had selected Mingsong Liang and Shuming Zhao as the new independent directors for the company board. Liang is a co-managing partner of investment banking firm CLA Partners in China. He received his PhD degree in economics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a JD degree from New York University. Liang additionally serves on the audit committee for Daqo’s board.
Venture capital to the tune of US$350 million in 33 deals was handed out to solar-based firms in the third quarter of 2011, according to the latest roundup by Cleantech Group. Also of note was a reported US$812 million raised four China-based solar cell/module manufacturers via IPOs.
Following on from the recent Solyndra debacle, the head of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Program, Jonathan Silver, has resigned his post. Although the two incidents might well be unrelated, media reports are hinting at the two being linked, following the DOE’s bestowal of a loan of US$535 million to the now-bankrupt Solyndra.
No surprises after announcing it was entering into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, Evergreen Solar has been officially delisted from Nasdaq. Evergreen Solar stock was suspended from the exchange on August 24, 2011 and has not traded on NASDAQ since that time.
