SolarCity is continuing its upward spiral. At the beginning of this week, the company announced its partnership with Credit Suisse on a second round of investment. SolarCity has now opened an expanded operations centre in Beltsville, US. The company is ensuring new jobs in Maryland and to give the state’s homeowners, businesses and non-profit organizations better energy options that can cost less than their utility bills. Attendees at today’s grand opening included US senator Ben Cardin, as well as state senator Jim Rosapepe and state delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk.
Emcore and Camstar Systems announced that Emcore will be replacing various legacy manufacturing systems with the Camstar Enterprise platform. The changes will be incorporated into different systems, including the manufacturing execution (MES), quality management and statistical process control (SPC). The solution aims to simplify the system complexities essential to running Emcore's wafer and cell processing and assembly, test and panel manufacturing.
IKEA has been on a roll this week announcing the completion of its latest rooftop solar projects on its US stores. Following its Chicago and Atlanta installations, the company revealed that its Draper, Utah store now has a 1,015kW system spread across 180,500 square feet of rooftop space producing electricity.
European solar manufacturers have officially launched their own initiative to urge the European Commission into investigating what it considers unfair trade practices by Chinese solar manufacturers. The EU ProSun initiative states that its goal is to “maintain a sustainable and vibrant solar manufacturing base in Europe.”
Credit Suisse, which just announced its US$200 million partnership with Solar City, has additionally advised that it has committed US$200 million to Sunrun. The investment will help support the purchase and installation of thousands of residential solar systems in the US. Sunrun noted that it installs over US$1.5 million in solar every day and has more than 24,000 customers in ten states.
Upsolar advised that it had completed the installation of its latest project, which also happens to be the company’s largest project in the US to date: a 2.2MW solar plant in Sharon, Vermont. Talmage Solar Engineering oversaw the construction of the project, which uses Tigo Energy’s Module Maximizer technology and the company’s digital monitoring services at the module level.
Just two days after IKEA’s Atlanta store officially turned on its rooftop solar array, the company announced that two of its Chicago-area stores, in Bolingbrook and Schaumburg, Illinois, now sport new rooftop PV projects. The two projects cover a total of 248,700 square feet and have a combined generating capacity of 1,989kW. Together, the two installations use 8,463 panels, which were provided by SolarWorld. SoCore Energy was responsible for the development, design and installation.
Solar stocks in Chinese companies have been under increased pressure following reports that SolarWorld’s anti-dumping case against Chinese OEMs is progressing to the European Union. Jefferies has predicted that if the anti-dumping verdict is passed, it will be negative towards Chinese cell/module suppliers, positive to Taiwanese cell suppliers, SunPower and First Solar and neutral to poly and wafer suppliers (assuming the scope is largely limited to cells as in the US).
The latest global PV inverter market report from IMS Research paints a mixed business environment for the sector that has more than 150 active suppliers. Although having defended reasonably well against price declines, compared to the rest of the supply chain, the market research firm is forecasting inverter sector revenues to only increase by 3% in 2012, while shipments increased nearly 25%.
After a rebound in polysilicon sales in the first quarter of 2012, Wacker’s polysilicon sales declined 22% in the second quarter due to customers delaying or reducing delivery quantities. Sales in the second quarter reached €286.8 million, down from €366.6 million in the prior quarter. However, the major reason for the sales decline was due to the substantial reduction in polysilicon prices, which will also result in lower sales being achieved this year than in 2011, according to the company.
