China Sunergy saw its revenues increase sequentially and year over year, while its quarterly shipments came up a bit short of guidance. The company’s results reflect the shift in focus to in-house module manufacturing that occurred in November 2010, following the acquisitions of CEEG (Shanghai) Solar Science & Technology and CEEG (Nanjing) New Energy.
3U Solar Systemhandel has entered into a framework contract where it will acquire 25MW of Canadian Solar PV modules. The contract is valued at €30 million for 2011 with its parent company, 3U Holding guaranteeing the financing of the agreement. Additionally, 3U Solar signed a second supply contract with an unidentified trading and project company based in Berlin, Germany. The second contract holds a €18.5 million value.
Abound Solar is making its entrance into the Indian market under a long-term sales agreement with Solarsis. The companies aim to promote Abound’s thin-film modules to project developers in the country’s burgeoning solar market. Additionally, Solarsis will create a test facility catering to the enhancement of balance of system (BoS) designs that center on Abound Solar’s thin-film modules. The collaboration's first project will be a 1MW ground-mount solar array in Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, India. Specifics about the financial terms of the agreement or the amount and timing of module shipments were not revealed.
In 2008, Hawaiian Electric sent out renewable energy project proposal requests for Oahu, Hawaii under the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) competitive bidding framework. As a result of that request, SunPower and Hawaiian Electric have agreed to a 20-year PPA with energy being produced from a 5MW solar farm at Kalaeloa in West Oahu. SunPower will design, build and operate the plant using its solar panels and SunPower Tracker system.
Siemens Industry has debuted a new program that allows customers to take advantage of solar power benefits without making a large initial capital investment. The Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) platform from Siemens building technologies division presents all different customers the chance to take part in the PPA, but is especially aimed to entice the public sector who is unable to take advantage of solar federal tax incentives.
Subhendu Guha, Jeff Yang and Baojie Yan of thin-film solar module manufacturer United Solar, a subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, have been granted U.S. Patent 7,902,049 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for their “method of depositing high-quality microcrystalline semiconductor materials.” The patent was granted to the company just a few months after it announced that the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory had conducted testing resulting in a 12% initial conversion of the nanocrystalline technology.
Just fifteen miles outside of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam’s Dong Nam Industrial Park, First Solar has begun construction on its four-line PV module manufacturing plant. The ground breaking of First Solar’s US$300 million Vietnamese plant comes one week after the company announced its plans for a second U.S. manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona. Commercial production at the Vietnam site is slated to begin during the second half of 2012.
Q-Cells Malaysia has appointed Franz Vollmann as its new managing director. Vollmann succeeds Q-Cells Malaysia founder Bernhard Rack and will be responsible for managing the operation and future growth of the company’s production facilities. He starts his new role on April 1.
Water is not a surface that immediately springs to mind when contemplating where to install a solar array, however, this may not be the case for much longer thanks to Sunengy’s ground-breaking Liquid Solar Array (LSA) technology. Sunengy hopes to build a pilot LSA plant in India before the end of the year and has enlisted the help of India’s largest integrated private power utility, Tata Power, to help realise this goal.
According to the latest report by the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) the feed-in tariff rates in Australia’s Capital Territory (ACT) need to be reduced. The report proposes that the premium cash rate paid to generators of renewable energy - including those with home solar energy systems - should drop from 45.7c a kilowatt hour to 39c a kilowatt hour. Any changes made will only affect new market entrants who install after July 1, 2011.
