Production of polysilcon continues to expand as major suppliers attempt to keep pace with market demand. Wacker Chemie has updated plans to expand its polysilicon production that includes spending €130 million on debottlenecking measures to add 10,000MT more capacity. Wacker noted that it is essentially sold out under supply contracts through 2014.
Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan was said by experts to be the largest to hit the country in over a century. A massive10-metre (33-foot) high tsunami battered coastal towns and cities across the northeast coast with Sendai, north of Tokyo affected the most by the disaster. As for the events' impact on the solar PV supply chain, initial reports indicate the effects have been minimal.
A group of 15 investors have launched a legal challenge to overturn Spain's decision to cut its feed-in tariff. The group, who are thought to have invested more than €4 billion in the Spanish PV industry and includes private equity and infrastructure funds such as Impax Asset Management and Hudson Clean Energy Partners, are appealing the decision under the international Energy Charter Treaty.
Delta Energy Systems’ inverter lines have been certified for compatibility with First Solar’s latest FS-Series 2 and FS-Series 3 thin-film modules. First Solar’s System Design and Application certification covers both Delta’s Solivia 2.5, 3.0, 3.3 and 5.0 EU G3 string inverters and its central inverter line.
PV module encapsulants supplier, STR Holdings posted 2010 sales to the solar sector of US$259.2 million, an increase of 73.4%, compared to sales of US$149.5 million in 2009. Management noted that the increase in sales was due to increased market share gains with its current Tier 1 Chinese customers as well starting to supply a large Asian module manufacturer in the year.
SolFocus has promoted chief operating officer Bob Legendre to president and COO, reporting to CEO Mark Crowley. In his new, expanded position, Legendre will oversee a broad range of activities including manufacturing, supply chain, engineering and deployment. As the COO, Legendre led SolFocus’s engineering organization and finalized SolFocus’s product realization and product certification for deployment in EMEA, Australia and North America.
Tenaska Solar Ventures has chosen Soitec’s Concentrix concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) technology to power its new 150MW Imperial Solar Energy Center (ISEC) West plant in Southern California, with local utility SDG&E agreeing to buy the power generated from the site under a 25-year PPA. The company also announced plans to build a 200MW capacity CPV module manufacturing facility in the San Diego area. The ISEC West project has applied for a DOE loan guarantee as well.
BTU International’s Shanghai, China manufacturing plant has shipped its 3000th thermal processing unit since its opening in February of 2004. During the seven years the plant has been in operation, it has gone through several modifications and expansions, including a 2008 addition of a solar application lab. The plant earned ISO 9001:2008 certification for its observance of high quality standards in 2009.
Akrion Systems has appointed Dr. Mehran Asdigha as its new vice president of engineering. Asdigha joins the surface preparation specialists from BlueShift Technologies where he was senior vice president of engineering.
