The Los Angeles Times has reported that plans for a 970-acre solar PV farm near the Salton Sea in southeastern California have been shelved because of cost concerns. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power made the move at the same time that City Council members indicated they were not going to back the project. The 55MW (AC) Niland project, announced in August, was to have been designed, engineered, and built by First Solar and equipped with the thin-film PV company's CdTe modules.
In a significant turnaround compared to the first half of 2009, solar module manufacturer Solon said that it was seeing strong demand from the German market, resulting in its production plants in Germany now running at full capacity. Solon’s factory in Berlin has a capacity of 60MW, while the second plant in Greifswald has a capacity of 200MW. Without giving exact guidance, Solon said that revenue in the months of October and November has already surpassed the third quarter of 2009. Solon posted net revenue of €218.4 million in 3Q09.
Professor Utz Claassen has been appointed CEO of Solar Millennium. The decision was reached following a meeting of the supervisory board held earlier this month. Claassen will begin in the new role on the first of January.
Since announcing the project in September, SunPower has finished the first phase of Italy’s largest solar power plant in Montalto di Castro. Construction of the €120 million, 24MW plant was completed in eight months and was connected to the grid on November 30, several weeks ahead of schedule. The Montalto di Castro plant uses 78,720 SunPower solar panels as well as its tracker systems. The project is being built for SunRay Renewable Energy
Possibly the largest ever dichlorosilane (DCS) redistribution process (RDR) project has been successfully completed by Dynamic Engineering (DEI) for GCL Solar’s polysilicon plant. The RDR project for GCL was designed to process 10,000 mta of DCS, which eliminates the byproduct through conversion of DCS to trichlorosilane (TCS). GCL Solar is planning to expand polysilicon production to 18,000 MTA by end of 2009 and 21,000 MTA by end of 2010.
The Florida Public Service Commission has approved Tampa Electric's contract to purchase solar power supplied by the Florida Solar I project, a proposed 25MW solar electric generating station, for a 25-year period beginning in 2011. The system will be developed, built, and operated by Energy 5.0 on a 350-acre site in Polk County.
SunPower’s internal investigation into unsubstantiated accounting entries at its Philippine manufacturing base has made progress, according to the company. The discrepancies were announced in November 2009 and concerned the inclusion of some figures on the financial records for 2009 that may have been intended for inclusion on the 2008 books.
TEPCO’s Ohgishima solar power plant is to be equipped with around 13MW of Kyocera’s solar modules, the company has revealed. The Ohgishima project, dubbed the “Mega Solar System,” is being built by Hitachi with a scheduled completion date in 2011. The modules will be installed on a 57-acre site on an artificial island near Tokyo Bay, one of the largest solar installations in the country.
GCL-Poly Energy Holdings has announced its plans to enter into a joint venture and share subscription agreement with the Chinese wealth fund China Investment Corporation (CIC). The share subscription agreement is expected to raise around HK$5.5 billion, giving CIC a 20% share in GCL. The joint venture company will be set up in early 2010 to invest in and develop PV projects overseas.
The race for higher photovoltaic module efficiencies has heated up and reached a new milestone, with the news that REC and the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) have produced the first multicrystalline solar panels to hit 17.0% aperture-area conversion efficiency. The previous world record of 16.53% was announced by Suntech in late September, a result that had topped ECN and its partners' record of 16.4%, which was achieved earlier in the year.
