San Diego Gas & Electric has increased its solar and renewable energy portfolio pipeline with the addition of another 190MW of resources, including a 150MW PV power plant to be developed and built in the Imperial Valley. The Southern California utility and Sempra Energy unit has announced signed power purchase agreements for almost 770MW of solar generation since January.
The Solar Engineering and Manufacturing Association (SEMA) will hold a breakfast meeting during Intersolar North America. The event takes place Thursday, July 14, from 8:15 until 9:45am at the Palomar Hotel, a few blocks from the Moscone Center.
It’s almost as if the weather knows. With only a few days to go before Intersolar North America kicks off, the prediction is for four sunny days in a row from Monday to Thursday next week. So be sure to step outside of the Moscone Center every now and again to bask in the sunshine in between booth visits, conferences and networking.
Hemlock Semiconductor’s new polysilicon plant, currently under construction in Clarksville, Tennessee, USA has signed a multi-year contract with Praxair, which will supply hydrogen to the facility. Praxair said it would build and operate an on-site hydrogen generating facility and supply liquid hydrogen by truck. The plant start-up is scheduled for 2012, according to Praxair. Praxair also supplies nitrogen and hydrogen to Hemlock’s polysilicon facility in Hemlock, Michigan.
Not content to match a growing number of PV module manufacturers improved warranty guarantees, Bosch Solar Energy has removed clauses related to customer compensation for lost earnings in the event that a module's output is too low, resulting in lower customer costs and administration related to claims. Inline with some of its competitors, Bosch Solar has also improved the product quality guarantee from 5 years to 10 years and offers a 25-year performance warranty for modules that were delivered before July 2011. The new warranties apply from July 2011 onwards.
Just days after announcing the completion of its third research and development center in Singapore, the PV business unit of Heraeus advised that it has tripled the size of its global technical staff so that it can more easily meet the demand for its products and customer timeframes. The Singapore facility joins the company’s US and Germany R&D sites, as well as Heraeus’ Shanghai and Taoyuan application centers.
At the solar industry’s largest event, Intersolar Europe, 2011 SunPower launched its new 96-cell E20 modules, which are the industry's first commercially-available solar panels to achieve total area efficiencies of 20% and above. Jorn Jugens, SunPower’s managing director, Germany had the honour of discussing with PV-Tech the key characteristics of the module, which includes SunPower's 22.4% efficient ‘Maxeon’ cell technology.
JDS Uniphase (JDSU) revealed that it bought product design, patented intellectual property and other key assets from UK-based CPV provider QuantaSol. Financial details pertaining to the acquisition were not disclosed, but JDSU did advise that it plans to bring the new assets over from QuantaSol to the JSDU headquarters in Milpitas, California over the next six months.
ENN Mojave Energy, a subsidiary of China’s ENN Group, is planning to build a 720MW solar system and thin-film manufacturing facility in southern Nevada.
Less than four months after being struck by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, the T?hoku region of Japan is in line to receive ¥10 billion (US$123.7 million) in solar investment. The funds will be used to build at least 10 solar systems, which are all likely to have capacities ranging from 1-2MW and help to meet the electricity shortfall that has hit the region in the aftermath of March’s disaster.
