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.
This year’s PV Fab Managers’ Forum, taking place in Dresden, Germany on March 8th and 9th, looks set to be an event to remember. SEMI’S PV Group, organizers of the Forum, have appointed as hosts eight fab managers from solar cell manufacturing companies. The representatives will be shouldered with the task of working actively with the PV Group to improve the customer-supplier relation in the photovoltaic industry.
REC’s announcement on December 15th, 2008 regarding the requirement of repair work on its Moses Lake Plant III has seen the work continue into the second week of February 2009. It seems there was close to double the expected amount of welding work to be done, leading to the unscheduled delay in preparing the plant for commercial polysilicon production, which has now been scheduled for the second half of March.
