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.
Neo Solar Power (NSP) has said that its thin-film task force, which is led by Dr. Sam Hong, President of NSP, expects to commence production of its first thin-film production line in the second half of 2009. The company is targeting between 30 and 60MW initial capacity.
Trina Solar has placed a multi-year, multi-system contract for Spire’s ‘Spi-Sun’ Simulator 4600 Single Long Pulse (4600 SLP) systems. The 4600 SLP has recently been purchased by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Underwriters Laboratories.
Day4 Energy, Inc. has said that its Generation II solar cell technology and processes have reached a new performance milestone with conversion efficiencies reaching 19 percent on mono-crystalline and 18 percent on multi-crystalline silicon materials in its R&D lab. Importantly, the company claims that when the Gen II technology is put into production over the next 18 months, production costs will have been reduced by up to 25 percent compared to conventional production costs.
To support a planned capacity increase, Spectrolab has placed a multi-unit order with Veeco Instruments for its TurboDisc K-475 As/P (arsenic phosphide) metal organic chemical vapor (MOCVD) deposition system. The tools will be used for the fabrication of the Boeing-owned divisions space-based solar cells.
Schneider Electric is to purchase Xantrex Technology, Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $412 million. Xantrex is a top 3 global player in the solar and wind inverter market and number 1 in the U.S. As a condition to the sale, Xantrex will divest its programmable power business to AMETEK, Inc. for $120 million in cash.
Sempra Generation has selected First Solar to provide a 10MW turnkey thin-film PV energy plant near Boulder City, Nevada. The project started in July and is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. The modules to be used at this ground-mount project will come from First Solar’s manufacturing facility in Perrysburg, Ohio, the company said.
Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. has selected Spire Corporation’s ‘Spi-Sun Simulator’ 4600 Single Long Pulse systems for photovoltaic module testing operations in both the United States and China.
