Hoku announced that effective March 31, Dustin Shindo will step down as Hoku chairman, president and CEO, although he will continue to serve the company in advisory position as a consultant. Scott Paul, Hoku's former chief operating officer, has been approved to succeed Shindo as president and CEO.
Mitsubishi Electric has appointed Kenichiro Yamanishi as new president and CEO. He is scheduled to assume his new position on April 1. He will be replacing Setsuhiro Shimomura, who will be appointed to the new position of chairman.
CIGS thin-film start-up DayStar has appointed Magnus Ryde its new chief executive officer and a director of the company's board. DayStar also announced that William Steckel resigned from his positions of CEO and CFO on February 15. Steckel will continue to serve on DayStar's board. Ryde was North American President of the leading semiconductor foundry, Taiwan-based TSMC. He also spent 18 years with KLA-Tencor in various executive roles. DayStar has had a string of executive changes over the past two years.
Solar power plants located on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land in Nevada are starting to gain approval with the news that NextLight Renewable Power will start construction of a 50MW PV power plant called Silver State, near Primm, Nevada, in early December 2010. NV Energy and NextLight announced a 25-year contract for the purchase and sale of energy from the plant that should see deliveries start in May 2011.
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.
