Cited as one of its largest single investments in manufacturing facilities in the long history of the company, Bosch is planning to invest over €520 million in a new fully-integrated solar module manufacturing plant in Batu Kawan, Penang, Malaysia. Construction is expected to start by the end of 2011 with production scheduled to have begun by the end of 2013. When fully ramped in 2014, capacity is expected to reach a combined 640MW. The company noted that it still expects sales to pass the €1 billion level this year.
Independent Energy Solutions (IES) has installed a 936kW solar carport at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in southern California. The utility scale system, located at Pendleton's new Bachelor Enlisted Quarters, can generate around 1.3 million kWh of electricity annually.
CleanPath has revealed that its plans to invest US$800 million towards the development of 1,000MW of large-scale solar PV projects in North America over the next five years. The company will manage two revolving facilities in its investment by targeting large-scale solar projects that range in size from 5MW to over 100MW.
M+W Group has established a new subsidiary in Dresden: M+W Integrated Solutions, which will cater to the high-tech service business in Europe. The new subsidiary will support its customers with services such as plant reconstruction and extension, installation, commissioning and service for high-tech equipment and certification and acceptance testing.
Borrego Solar Systems has closed its latest investment fund to help finance and install a number of new PV projects across the US. East West Bank and US Bank are partnering Borrego on the fund, which will take the company’s solar PPA portfolio past the US$100 million mark.
Henan Sungen Solar Fab, a subsidiary of Anwell Technologies, has secured funding totalling more than US$100 million to help expand its thin-film production capacity in China. Financial backing came from the Municipal Government of An Yang City in Henan Province.
Solar-Konzept has started building work on its 28MW solar park in Giebelstadt, Germany. The project, located on the site of a former NATO airport, will be equipped with 120,000 REC modules, making it one of the largest in the whole of Bavaria.
As the 37th IEEE Photovoltaics Specialist Conference (PVSC) gets underway in Seattle, Alta Devices plans to discuss how it achieved record cell efficiencies of 27.6% last year as well as its overall best efficiency rating of 28.2%. Both results were verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with Alta disclosing that the high efficiencies they reached were due in part to a new discovery involving the light emitted and collected by a solar cell.
The world’s largest exhibition for the solar industry, Intersolar Europe, drew to a close on June 10, boasting record exhibitor and visitor numbers. Around 77,000 visitors and 2,280 exhibitors attended the exhibition from 156 countries. A snap-shot of visitor and exhibitor feed-back is highlighted in this introduction video from PV-Tech, to this year’s event.
Construction on the world’s largest solar thermal power plant was officially begun at a groundbreaking ceremony held on Friday June 17th. Attending the ceremony for the Blythe solar power plant facility was US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, California’s Governor Jerry Brown and Joseph DeConinck, Blythe’s mayor, as well as representatives of the Solar Trust of America and Solar Millennium.
