Two material suppliers to the photovoltaics module manufacturing market, Momentive Performance Materials and Targray Technology International have signed an agreement, whereby Targray will distribute Momentive’s silicone potting, sealing and adhesive products on a global basis. The deal also includes co-branding of Momentive’s products for Solar Applications.
Day4 Energy has announced the appointment of Tim Morath as director of sales for Central Europe, and Luigi Fusi as director of sales and corporate development for Southern Europe. In line with the anticipated growth of the North American market, the company has also announced that Jake Brown who was previously responsible for the company's global marketing and business development activities will now be focusing on the US market.
Douglas Gray, who has been the area sales manager at Teknek for the past four years, has been promoted to European sales manager. The position's predecessor, David Westwood, has now taken on the position of general manager, Teknek USA at the company's new sales and fulfilment facility in Charlotte, North Carolina.
After the initial excitement surrounding the New South Wales Solar Bonus Scheme, which gave the state the most generous feed-in tariff in the country, a certain amount of criticism has arisen. The scheme was officially launched on the January 1, 2010, bringing NSW residents a gross FiT payment of AUS$0.60/kWh (€0.368711) for all energy generated.
Despatch Industries has sold its first dryer and firing furnace solar-cell manufacturing system into China. The company said that the UltraFlex tool was bought by a top 10 Chinese cell producer.
OPDE, the Spanish solar developer, has now closed a €100 million project finance deal to build two PV solar plants with a combined capacity of 22MW. The project finance agreement has been signed with investment banks Banco Santander, La Caixa and BBVA.
Ritek has now made an additional NT$800 million (US$24.8 million) investment in Taiwan-based PVNext, the CIGS module JV with Scheuten Solar, for a stake of 40%.
Due to the lack of medium-voltage power grids in Italy, S.A.G. Solarstrom is also building a transformer substation as part of the installation of 10 photovoltaic systems with a total output of 9.7 MWp in the South Italian province of Brindisi. The project consists of nine ground-mounted systems each with 999 kWp and one system with 710.4 kWp, making a total output of 9.7 MWp. Construction will start this year, and grid connection is planned in April, 2010. Polycrystalline modules from Yingli Green Energy as well as inverters from SMA will be used.
A new joint venture triple junction thin-film solar company is being formed between Sharp, Enel Green Power, and STMicroelectronics. The equal partners are set to invest €320 million to establish an initial production capacity of 160MW at an existing but shuttered former 300mm semiconductor fab owned by STMicroelectronics in Catania, Italy. Thin-film module production is expected to start at the beginning of 2011 and ramped over several years to a targeted 480MW annual capacity.
One of the prime movers in Ascent Solar's efforts to develop roll-to-roll commercial manufacturing of the company's flexible CIGS thin-film PV modules is retiring. Prem Nath, Ascent's senior VP of production operations, will leave the firm on Jan. 15, 2010. He will continue to work with the company as a consultant.
