SunPower and Kern Community College District have opened a 1.1MW solar power system at Bakersfield College. The system, which will supply one-third of the college’s electricity, took five months to build and features a 3.1-acre parking lot canopy structure with nearly 3,700 PV panels.
Having completed its planned cell manufacturing capacity expansion to 800MW, Neo Solar Power (NSP) expects capacity to be expanded to over 1.2GW in 2011. The capacity expansion is 200MW more than previously guided at the beginning of the year. Strong demand despite the capacity increase from 240MW in 2009 highlights the company’s confidence in the market growing next year.
SolarEdge Technologies has chosen One Network to market and install its PowerBoxes, PV monitoring portal and three-phase solar inverters. One Network has installed 7MW of PV and tracking equipment in France in 2010 and hopes its agreement with SolarEdge will see it break the 10MW barrier next year.
Semprius has completed the installation of the first microcell-based HCPV research development and demonstration (RD&D) system at Tucson Electric Power (TEP). The installation, which was completed in August this year, combines Semprius' HCPV modules with an automated solar tracking system from Siemens. The TEP project is part of a joint development agreement signed by Semprius and Siemens at the beginning of 2010, which aims to achieve the deployment of numerous new HCPV systems at test sites around the world.
Emcore and San’an Optoelectronics Company have come together for an investment and cooperation agreement with the Huainan municipal government. Under the agreement, Emcore and San’an will register and operate their joint venture (JV), Suncore Photovoltaics, in Huainan City for the production of CPV components and systems for terrestrial solar power applications.
The Greater Toronto area will be home to a new solar panel manufacturing facility courtesy of Eclipsall Energy. The company is investing over CAN$10 million for the 64MWp plant, which is anticipated to be operational during the first half of 2011. The need for expansion of the manufacturing line will be evaluated later in 2011.
Unirac has been awarded the ISO 9001:2008 International Organization for Standardization certification for its quality management system. The year-long certification process, which involved internal and external audits across the business and customer support organizations, provides Unirac with international recognition for its attempts to continually monitor and improve its management structure.
Suss MicroTec and Rolith have come together to use Rolith’s disruptive nanolithography method in order to develop and construct nanostructuring equipment. Rolith’s nanolithography technology uses near-field optical lithography with cylindrically shaped rolling masks. Sub-wavelength resolution is reached by a phase-interference effect or plasmonic enhancement printing structures. Rolith advises that a continued operation yields a high throughput with low cost production.
