Colorado and Arizona are the newest states to whom KACO and Sungevity have extended their iQuote online sales tool availability. The system allows for homeowner’s to import simple data points into the Sungevity online portal and receive an iQuote within 24 hours. Many of the iQuote systems have been installed with Blueplant inverters from KACO.
As the photovoltaic marketplace expands by the day, pvXchange declares that after just six months of business in 2010 it has already brokered more modules and inverters than during the course of the whole of 2009. The online trading platform, which buys and sells solar photovoltaic equipment, has also seen a further 1,000 participants registering online since the beginning of this year.
Hamburg-based Luxcara Asset Management is the owner of a new 18MW solar power plant built by Phoenix Solar in Senftenberg, Brandenburg, Germany on the site of a former opencast mining area. Approximately 240,000 CdTe thin film modules from First Solar will have been used for the project when completed.
Continuing to gain major OEM module supply deals for its high performance, low cost solar modules, JA Solar has signed a multi-year supply agreement with MEMC Electronic Materials. The supply-deal wills see MEMC subsidiary, SunEdison use JA Solars OEM modules for projects starting in the third quarter of 2010 and going through 2012. The move means that JA Solar’s modules will be used in commercial-scale and utility-scale projects in the future.
In a bid to expand into the photovoltaic testing marketplace, Westpak Laboratories, the independent environmental testing company, announces the selection of the Atonometrics UV Exposure System to test and certify photovoltaic modules.
Crystalline silicon solar cell manufacturer, China Sunergy, has announced the departure of company VP and general manager of the operations division. Yang Fang ("Roger") has resigned from his position due to personal reasons.
ABB, the power and automation technology group based in Switzerland, has won an order worth US$50 million from Actelios Solar, to supply three photovoltaic solar power plants in western Sicily, Italy. The plants, with a total combined power capacity of over 13MW, will be based in Spinasanta, Cardonita and Sugherotorto and will be 6MW, 3.8MW and 3.3MW respectively.
The Conciliation Committee of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, and Bundesrat, the federal council, finally reached a compromise on July 6 over the controversial reduction of Solar Funding. The committee recommended slightly reducing the proposed 16% cuts over a three-month transition period in order to resolve the political dispute over the changes to the country's feed-in tariff.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has offered a conditional commitment for a US$1.45 billion loan guarantee to Abengoa Solar. The loan, which was announced by President Obama in his weekly address, will support the construction and start-up of Solana, a 250MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Arizona.
Wacker Chemie has signed a PPA with Fesil group for the acquisition of its silicon-metal production site based in Holla, Norway. The transaction will still require the approval of Wacker's supervisory board and Fesil's board of directors as well as clearance by the antitrust authorities.
