Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd has officially announced the construction of a new solar cell manufacturing plant at its Nishikinohama Factory, Kaizuka City, Osaka, Japan. Groundbreaking took place on February 17th, 2009 with the new facility expected to be completed in October 2009. The new facility will be dedicated to the production of Sanyo’s Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer (HIT) solar cells. The company also announced that HIT production at its Shimane Plant in Unnan City, Shimane Prefecture, Japan will also be expanded to meet demand for its HIT solar cells in Japan and Europe.
Corus Colors and Dyesol held their third milestone meeting for their collaborative project last Wednesday at the PV Accelerator. The companies are working together to develop product, processes and facilities that will produce Dye Solar Cells (DSC) integrated onto strip steel in a coil coating line.
Arava Power, a joint venture of Kibbutz Ketura and foreign backers led by Yosef Abramowitz, announced that is has won approval from the Israel Electric Company (IEC) to build an 80MW solar PV field on kibbutz land in the Arava. IEC issued its approval once it had determined that it could run a line from the Arava to the national grid.
Preliminary financial results published by PV module manufacturer, Centrosolar Group AG, reveal a new revenue record of €331.8 million in 2008, more than a 50% increase in revenue of €220.3 million for 2007. According to the company, sales actually exceeded the revenue target of €310 million set at the beginning of 2008.
CaliSolar has chosen Eyelit to provide its factory automation, manufacturing execution, quality, and asset management software suite to support the upgraded metallurgical-grade silicon (UMG-Si) solar cell company in its production ramp of a new, fully integrated facility in Sunnyvale, CA.
Yingli Green Energy has not altered its 2009 module shipment guidance, despite the global economic downturn and module oversupply in the solar industry. Yingli Green expects module shipments to be between 550MW-600MW in 2009. This represents an increase of 96.1% to 113.9% compared to fiscal year 2008.
Schneider Electric subsidiary Xantrex Technology, Inc. has announced the launch of the Xantrex GT500E and the Xantrex GT250E Three Phase Grid Tie Solar Inverters for the Italian market.
Adept Technologies, Inc. has signed Eagle Technologies Group as its newest Preferred Packaging Partner (PPP) in order to together improve robotic packaging solutions in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and consumer goods markets. The PPP program is intended to provide customers with access to an experienced channel for Adept’s major high-speed robotics initiative in the North American packaging market.
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. has reiterated plans to reach 1GW of nominal production capacity of its flexible a-Si thin-film photovoltaics in 2010. Company executives also said in a conference call with financial analysts that they had added 60MW of nominal capacity in the last six months, bringing total capacity to 178MW. A new site had also been chosen to bring capacity up to 420MW in 2010.
Moser Baer’s 40MW thin-film module production line has been granted certification by the International Electrotechnical Commission. The IEC certification guarantees that the thin-film modules being produced at the company’s Greater Noida plant have passed all requirements for functional and mechanical capabilities for long-term operation, as well as maintaining safety specifications under challenging environmental conditions.
