DuPont and Applied Materials have teamed to boost the performance of c-Si solar cells. Applied is focusing on reduce the shadowing effect of wide grid lines on solar cells employing its Baccini ‘Esatto’ technology and customized formulations of DuPont’s ‘Solamet’ metallization paste.
Air Liquide is to build a large thin-film production unit to serve customers in the world's largest Solar Valley in Thalheim near Leipzig, Germany. The unit will be built to accommodate the increasing demand for thin-film technology in the area. The company will produce more than 38,000 tons of nitrogen per year, representing an investment of around €10 million.
German-based c-Si PV module manufacturer, Solar-Fabrik has said that its production lines are at full capacity as its struggles to meet demand for its modules after a successful marketing campaign in Europe and the U.S. promoting “made in Germany”. Solar-Fabrik has recruited a further 100 workers at its Freiburg facility and added additional shifts to meet demand.
Bureaucratic problems and administrative procedures had dogged solar installations in Greece in 2008 with only 11MW installed, up from 2MW in 2007, according to the EPIA. However, by July, 2009 a total of 29.8MW has been installed this year, according to the Center for Renewable Energy Sources in Greece and reported by Energia. The report noted that module price declines of approximately 35% had been a key catalyst for growth.
Wind turbine manufacturer A-Power Energy Generation Systems has acquired struggling a-Si thin film equipment manufacturer, Evatech Co for US$49.9 million. A-Power plans to move the Kyoto, Japan based equipment suppliers operations to China and produce thin film modules for the building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) market in China. The transaction is expected to close by the end of November 2009.
The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has verified that production-level copper indium gallium (di)selenide solar cells from Global Solar Energy have achieved 15.45% total area conversion efficiencies. The thin-film CIGS photovoltaics manufacturer says that it has also reached record peak efficiencies of 11.7% on flexible stainless-steel cell strings manufactured on its roll-to-roll lines at its full-scale production facilities in Arizona and Germany.
PV equipment supplier Roth & Rau has appointed Rainer Erdmann as Sales Director for Europe and Asia, replacing Thomas Hengst who was appointed a Management Board member in charge of sales in July of this year. The company is also extending its sales and service presence in India with new offices in Mumbai with additional service teams planned in Hyderabad, Delhi und Pune in the coming months.
Laser based equipment supplier, 4JET has said that it has received multiple new orders for edge deletion equipment used for thin film cell processing. The orders came from CIGS, a-Si and CdTe thin film manufacturers.
The race to higher conversion efficiencies in volume production for both monocrystalline and multicrystalline cells continues with news that Canadian Solar plans to boost cell performance to 18.5% and 16.8%, respectively. This will be accomplished by using several advances that include improvements in screen printing techniques, better texturization and a modified selective emitter process. The company said that these successful R&D projects will be migrated to production lines in the fourth quarter of 2009.
