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.
Northern California’s Butte College is looking forward to calling itself the only college in the United States that is grid positive. The achievement is anticipated to be reached by May 2011, with the recent approval by the school's board of trustees for the completion of its Phase III solar project. This next phase will add around 15,000 solar PV panels, 2.7MW DC, to its 1.85MW generated from 10,000 solar panels.
Fronius’ presence in Mississaugua, Ontario, will soon be expanding to include more than the sales and service subsidiary it has housed in the area. Fronius will be building a 50MW total capacity production site for its solar inverters, to be brought online by the end of the first quarter in 2011. Over 100 new jobs will be opened with this facility. The first assembly line will be for grid-connected Fronius IG Plus invertors, with the potential to expand production in the future.
IMS Research has fashioned the PV Demand Database, which provides installation for over 50 countries with historical and forecast data. The company’s research for the database found that cumulative solar PV installations will reach over 120GW by the end of 2014, with a steady annual PV installation increase of more than 20% between 2011 and 2014. The research predicts that over 80GW of new PV capacity will be installed globally during this period.
