During the Intersolar exhibition held last week in Munich, Germany, SCHOTT Solar announced plans to accelerate the capacity targets of its parabolic trough technology (Concentrated Solar Power) by the end of 2009 to approximately 1GW, and also announced a target of 1GW of annual capacity for PV production by 2012.
An Italian start-up, Estelux, has given a contract to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., to oversee the construction of it first polysilicon production facility to be built on an existing petrochemical site in Ferrara, Italy. SOLON Group was said to be an owner of shares in Estelux. The plant is expected to cost approximately €360 million and produce 4,000 tins of polysilion per year with full capacity expected to be reached in 2010.
SOLON S.p.A. has concluded a framework agreement with Deutsche Bank that will see the construction of turnkey solar power plants with a total capacity of 150MWp in Italy. The agreement between the Italian subsidiary of Solon AG and Deutsche Bank will run from 2008 to 2010, with the majority of the solar parks to be located in the south of Italy.
With plans to boost its sales into the photovoltaic market to over $1 billion in sales in the next five years from approximately $300 million currently, DuPont has said that it will more than double its production capacity of thick-film metallization pastes at its Electronic Materials DuPont Dongguan Ltd. (EMDD) facility in China.
The new polycrystalline photovoltaic module that boasts a claimed efficiency rate of 14.4% is due to be launched on June 18th by Sharp Corp. The company claims that the product’s structural differences mean that they are capable of the highest solar-to-electric conversion rate in the industry. The new module has an installation capacity up to 1.5-2 times greater than other modules due to better wind pressure resistance.
Eyelit has said that SYSTEMA GmbH will now offer consulting services and product sales for Eyelit’s manufacturing software suite of products across Europe as the demand for its products has increased in the region. SYSTEMA is already a trained Eyelit solution provider.
A collaborative research agreement has been signed between Akrion, Inc. and CEA-Liten that will see the equipment supplier and technological research organisation work together on the development of silicon-based heterojunction solar cells. The aim of the joint development is to create a specific process to manufacture cells at up to 20% efficiency using a high productivity process.
PLG Power Limited, the Energy and Power division of PLG Group, Mumbai, India, has placed a 25MW turnkey photovoltaic (PV) module production line order with Spire Corporation. This is PLG Power’s first operation in the PV industry.
Hemlock Semiconductor, the joint venture of Dow Corning, Shin-Etsu Handotai and Mitsubishi Materials, has said that it has started polysilicon production at its $1.5 billion expansion project in Hemlock, Michigan, USA. Hemlock reiterated that the expansion would add approximately 9,000 metric tons of polysilicon annually,
Canadian Solar, Inc. (CSI) and Becancour Silicon, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Timminco, Ltd., have confirmed that they have reached the supply and quality targets as set out in their original contract of April 4th, 2007. As a result of this, Canadian Solar plans to formally launch its e-Module product at the Intersolar Trade Show in Munich on June 12-14th, 2008.
