After a long search that started in May, 2009 GT Solar has now appointed a permanent Chief Financial Officer. The company has appointed Richard J. Gaynor to the role from Sonus Networks. Robert Woodbury, the former CFO had resigned for personal reasons. Vice President of Finance, Rich Johnson had held the CFO role during the search to replace Woodbury and will return to his former role within the company.
A triple-junction thin-film silicon cell structure that utilizes the majority of the solar spectrum is in development phase at Mitsubishi Electric. A 5mm x 5mm cell is claimed to have produced conversion efficiencies of 14.8% in the lab. High-quality film-deposition processing of each layer was required. Mitsubishi said that first layer absorbs short wavelengths and the third layer absorbs long wavelengths. Texture fabrication was also applied to transparent electrodes for optimal confinement of light.
With an expected Energy Feed-In Act for renewable energies due soon in Turkey, PV equipment supplier Schmid noted at a workshop it hosted with its Turkish sales partner, PV Teknik, that the country was poised to soon start producing PV modules for the domestic market. Turkey was claimed to have the best potential for solar energy after Spain, due to its geographical location and climate conditions.
Bosch Solar Energy and Linde Nippon Sanso (LNS), a company of The Linde Group, have signed a new gas supply deal that now includes the new c-Si solar cell plant. LNS will supply the 630MW facility cluster with bulk silane and ammonia gas. Linde is the main gas technology supplier to all of the production lines.
Fluor Corp. has won the engineering services contract for a new 50MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Badajoz, Spain. Spanish energy firm Elecnor is owner of the project, which will use parabolic trough technology. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed. Fluor will provide detailed engineering and other associated services for the project.
An Ulvac turnkey a-Si thin film customer, China Solar Power (CSP), will build its third production plant with an investment from the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). The 200MW nameplate capacity facility will be the first of its kind in at the Suzhou Industrial Park. SIP was established in the mid-1990s as a joint venture between Suzhou and Singapore. The cost of the new plant was put at US$180 million.
Day4 Energy has signed a 10MW solar module supply frame agreement with southern German integrator Solera sunpower. The deal marks the latest expansion in the two companies' business relationship, which began in 2009.
AIS Automation Dresden has been tapped by Bosch Solar Energy for one of its manufacturing execution systems (VPC-MES) for installation in Bosch’s Arnstadt crystalline solar cell manufacturing factory. This order marks the fourth AIS Automation MES system to be installed in a Bosch facility, and will enable the increase in Bosch’s production capacity by approximately 400MWp.
Robust customer demand for solar cells and OEM modules from JA Solar means that the company cannot meet 2010 bookings without increasing capacity. The company is targeting an increase in nameplate cell capacity to 1.1GW in 2010, which will be primarily for its ‘high-efficiency-enabled’ cells, using selective emitter technology. OEM modules and ingot production will also ramp in 2010.
Two months after ECN and REC claimed the highest conversion efficiency for multicrystalline-silicon solar modules, Kyocera has topped their mark and set a new world record. The Japanese company says it has achieved 16.6% total-area module efficiency, with an aperture-area efficiency of 17.3%, besting the Europeans' previous aperture-area record of 17%.
