M+W Zander has announced the appointment of Rick Whitney, company COO since 2002, as the new CEO with immediate effect. He served as COO and President of the Total Facility Solutions (TFS) division within M+W Zander, and in his new role as CEO will oversee the company’s development in the U.S. and overseas.
Q-Cells AG has revised its production and revenue forecasts on the basis of greater levels of secured supply of key raw materials such as UMG Si, and continued strong demand worldwide with 90 percent of its production sold or agreed through the end of 2009. Q-Cells expects to reach a production volume of 585MWp in 2008, up from 570MWp previously guided earlier in the year. Sales are therefore set to rise from a previously projected €1.275 billion to €1.325 billion.
Deutsche Solar AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of SolarWorld AG, has entered into a new polysilicon contract with DC Chemical, valued at $580 million through 2016. The polysilicon deal ensures the ability of the company to meet new solar wafer contracts worth $350 million from customers in Germany and China, the company said.
(SV Solar) has established a 2MW pilot production line in Sunnyvale, California to manufacture its ‘Sol-X’ concentrating PV modules. Pilot scale manufacturing equipment has now been deployed at its 15,000 square foot mixed-use facility, the company said.
REC is collaborating with Silicon Genesis Corporation (SiGen) on its thin-PV substrates made using its ‘kerf-free’ wafering process. REC is also collaborating with SiGen to develop high-volume manufacturing equipment and develop silicon ingot shaping requirements. The SiGen technology doesn’t require wafer sawing with wafers produced being within 150um to 50um in thickness and less brittle than conventional solar wafer.
Green Energy Technology Inc. (GET) has signed a five-year service contract with Applied Materials to support GET’s ‘SunFab’ production line, located in Taiwan. Get also produces multi-crystalline silicon wafers.
Collaboration between Manz Automation AG and Basler AG has led to Manz claiming that it has developed the fastest cell testers for crystalline silicon solar cells at more than 2,400 solar cells per hour. In an exclusive deal Manz has integrated Basler’s electroluminescence measurement technology into its testing platform, which is fully automated.
Unisolar has officially approved transformerless inverters from Sputnik Engineering for use with its products. With immediate effect, all amorphous thin-film modules from Unisolar – both branded and OEM products – can be combined with SolarMax products from Swiss inverter manufacturer Sputnik Engineering without further approval procedures.
ChengDu Tianwei New Energy PV Module Co. Ltd. (Tianwei) has selected stringing and tabbing systems from Spire as well as multiple ‘Spi-Assembler’ 6000 systems to fully automate the soldering of individual solar cells into strings ready for busing. Tianwei is automating these production steps as part of its plans to increase capacity of its solar cell products.
Gilad Almogy, Ph.D., has been promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Display and Thin Film Solar Products Business Group at Applied Materials. Dr. Almogy was named general manager of Applied's Display and Thin Film Solar Products Business Group in August 2007. Previously, he was general manager of Applied's Process Diagnostics and Control (PDC) business group based in Israel.
