Magnolia Solar has received a US$1 million award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). This award is to develop advanced thin-film solar cells in partnership with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany.
The U.S. Navy's Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) has awarded a $200 million contract to build up as much as 40MW of solar photovoltaic power plants at Navy and Marine Corps installations throughout the southwestern United States. Five solar developers/integrators--SunEdison, AECOM Energy/Solar Power Partners, SunPower, SunDurance Energy, and Chevron Energy Solutions--will compete for individual projects ranging in size from 1MW to 15MW.
Updated: The largest crystalline silicon PV module manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings has reported revenue figures for 2009, which were impacted by the decline of average selling price (ASP) for its PV modules. Total net revenues for the year were US$1,693.3 million, compared with US$1,923.5 million in 2008, even though shipments were up 43% compared with 2008. However, margins improved due to lower polysilicon and wafer costs. Gross profit was US$338.8 million and gross margin was 20.0% compared to consolidated gross profit of US$342.9 million and gross margin of 17.8% for the full year 2008. Suntech said it was sold-out through the first half of 2010 and would be boosting capital spending and increasing capacity, specifically for its ‘Pluto’ cell technology based modules.
Privately held manufacturing software provider, Eyelit said that it had won 5 new solar customers in 2009, which helped to see the company post record revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009. Eyelit doe not report financial figure results. The software specialist said that a roll-to-roll thin film, CIGS solar manufacturer became a customer in the fourth quarter, making it 5 new customers from the PV industry in 2009. The others in the sector included a UMG-silicon producer, a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) manufacturer, a mono- and multi-crystalline silicon wafer producer and a silicon cell manufacturer.
Satcon Technology has won a new order to supplier GCL Solar with 500kW ‘PowerGate’ Plus inverters for three separate solar power plants with a combined power of 38MW. The company had previously won inverter sales for projects reaching a combined 23MW for ground-mounted and largest rooftop projects in China in 2009.
Portland General Electric is expanding its solar energy resources with a new 2.4MW rooftop project. Once complete, this will be the largest rooftop solar project in the Pacific Northwest. PGE will partner with the U.S. Bank, ProLogis, and several Oregon companies on the project.
New orders for its diffusion processing systems have pushed Amtech Systems new order flow past US$80 million in its 2010 financial year. Solar orders in its fiscal Q2 reached US$27 million. New orders worth US$8.5 million were recently received from two new customers in Asia and one new customer in Europe.
In the second solar module supply deal announced by the vertically integrated Chinese manufacturer over the past week, Yingli Green Energy has signed a sales agreement with SunDurance Energy to provide more than 10MW of Yingli Solar-branded crystalline-silicon PV modules to the New Jersey-based solar power system designer/integrator through the third quarter of 2010. The deal is also the largest in SunDurance's history.
Kyocera has announced that it will significantly increase its annual solar cell production targets to meet the growing demand for solar energy products in the global market. New targets aim for an increase to 1GW annually by March 2013, which is more than 2.5 times the current fiscal year 2010 production volume of 400MW.
