Solarfun is to expand its U.S.-based marketing and customer support team in order to boost its North American presence and supplement current staff. Matt Miller has been appointed as regional manager covering the southwestern U.S. and Graham Landry has been appointed as regional manager in the west.
Astronergy is taking the next-step in its thin-film capacity expansion plans with the placement of a follow-on equipment order with Oerlikon Solar. The expanded capacity will incorporate new module materials and the latest innovations in thin-film technology, boosting Astronergy’s total thin-film module capacity to at least 75MW by early 2011. The China-based firm has a 30MW line in operation and has plans to expand production to 400MW.
DakkS has issued the Japan-based testing facilities of TÜV Rheinland with ANSI/UL 1703 testing accreditation. This compliments the existing JNLA, ASNITE and the CBTL recognition already held by the facility, as well as allowing combined testing sequences with IEC and ANSI.
Just when it was safe to say that the severe polysilicon shortages from a few years ago were long-gone and that a era of oversupply boded well for users in the solar industry, issues have emerged within the supply chain that are forcing spot prices higher once again. According to a report from Barclays Capital financial analyst, Visal Shah, checks have shown that spot prices have risen to as high as US$70-80/kg, yet spot prices were at US$55-60/kg range, only a few weeks ago. Bottlenecks were said to have appeared from polysilicon through to wafering, according to the analyst.
As part of its plans to boost production by 50% to 600MW in 2010 and its longer-term goal of reaching 1GW in capacity in 2013, Kyocera has started volume production at its new solar cell manufacturing facility in Yasu City, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Completed in March, 2010, the facility will fabricate its record setting multicrystalline solar cells with 16.9% conversion efficiencies using ‘back contact’ cell technology.
Touted as a ‘reference site’ for mid-sized solar power plants in Germany, Q-Cells and customer HEP Kapital have initiated a 5.3MWp plant on a 19-hectare brownfield site close to Spremberg in the federal state of Brandenburg at a cost of €16 million. The project, constructed by thermovolt uses 24,000 c-Si modules supplied by Q-Cells. The solar park is located on the site of a former military barracks that required clean-up work before construction could begin.
Sustainable Energy Technologies has revealed the immediately effective management change, which will see Michael Carten, the current chairman of the board, as the replacement for Sanjay Razdan as CEO of the company.
Robert Chiste and Uwe Krueger are the newly appointed independent directors to STR Holdings board of directors. Chiste will be on the audit committee as the third independent member and Dr. Krueger will serve on the nominating and corporate governance committee.
In a continuation of their already established partnership, SunEdison and DRI Energy have signed a channel partnership for the installation of 19MW of solar power plants in California, Hawaii and Arizona. SunEdison will finance solar deployment contracts assisted by DRI with commercial, government and utility clients. Additionally, SunEdison will own, operate, maintain and monitor the solar power plants, which are to be designed, engineered and constructed by DRI.
Through centrotherm photovoltaics' research and development strategy, three turnkey crystalline-silicon solar cell production lines owned by an unnamed Taiwanese customer are being retrofitted with a selective-emitter technology upgrade package.
