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.
During the European Photovoltaics Industry Association’s (EPIA) annual general meeting in Paris, France, the members of the association elected Dr. Martin Heming as its new director of the board. In addition to his board appointment, Heming serves as Schott Solar’s CEO.
David Goldman and Jay Meridew have joined Solon as executives in the company’s finance division. Goldman has been appointed the new vice president of project finance and strategic planning and will manage all financing for Solon’s commercial and utility-scale solar projects. Meridew will oversee accounting and information technology practices in his role as vice president of finance.
Sempra Generation has officially opened its 48MW Copper Mountain Solar project in Boulder City, Nevada. The company also announced its recently-approved plans to expand the plant by 200MW.
After last week closing seven nuclear plants for at least three months the German Government is now said to be discussing plans to raise the size of its renewable energy fund from €300 million to €1 billion. Amid fears of radiation leaks following Japan's nuclear crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered safety checks on the country’s plants constructed before 1980.
