Hanwha Chemical is planning to spend KRW1.04 trillion (US$955 million) on a new polysilicon plant in South Korea to help double sales over the next five years. When construction is completed in July 2013, the Yeosu plant will have the capacity to produce 10,000 metric tonnes of polysilicon a year.
Continuing its PV equipment company consolidation attempts, Meyer Burger will acquire Roth & Rau in a friendly takeover. Meyer Burger said it had already acquired a total of 11.3% of the share capital of Roth & Rau AG from the founders and key shareholders. Meyer Burger is offering bearer shares in Roth & Rau at €22 per share in cash, a premium of around 41% compared with the volume-weighted average share price of the past three months. The total deal is worth approximately €356.6 million.
Wacker Chemie's long-planned construction of a 15,000MT per annum polysilicon plant in Cleveland, Tennessee, has officially broken ground. The project is said to cost around US$1.5 billion and will create some 650 new jobs when the plant become operational in late 2013. With other planned capacity expansions in Germany, Wacker reiterated that it expects to reach an annual polysilicon capacity of 67,000MT in 2014.
French utility EDF will acquire the outstanding 50% share in EDF Energies Nouvelles after the renewable energy firm accepted an offer of €40 per outstanding share. This represents a premium of 10.4% on the share closing price on April 7 and a 23.8% premium compared to the daily volume-weighted average over the last six months.
United Solar and Advanced Green Technologies (AGT) have finished work on a new 807kW system spanning six school rooftops in New York’s South Country School District. Each school will generate around 158,000 kWh of electricity per annum and save over US$25,000 in the process.
Just a few miles from First Solar’s manufacturing operations in Perrysburg, Ohio, CdTe thin-film start-up Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (also known as WK Solar) has purchased a module lamination system from Bürkle.
Standard Solar is calling its new 753kW carport PV system at Maryland’s Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) the largest PV system of its kind in Maryland and one of the biggest PV carport systems on the East Coast. Using a Protek Park PV canopy system, the solar installation will be built on top of the community college’s parking structure. Suniva will provide over 3,100 solar panels for the project, which is anticipated to generate around one million kilowatt hours of electricity in its first operational year.
BlueChip Energy (BCE), a fully-integrated solar energy provider for residential, commercial, government and utility applications, has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply Progress Energy Florida with renewable solar photovoltaic power from the Sorrento Eagle Dunes Solar Farm, a 40 megawatt utility-scale solar PV facility the company is developing in Central Florida.
Kyocera Corporation have announced that 960-kilowatts (kW) of its solar modules (roughly 4,300 units) have been installed on the roof of the recently opened AEON Itami-Koya shopping center (operated by AEON Retail Co., Ltd.) in Itami City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
With the acquisition of US-based CdTe thin-film start-up PrimeStar now behind GE, the conglomerate is planning to expand its investments in PV with the building of a 400MW manufacturing plant, potentially bringing its total investment in the sector to over US$600 million.
