Fab & Facilities

AU Optronics and SunPower has been officially inaugurated at a ceremony that included key executives and Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib.

Dow Electronic Materials broke ground on its new Eastern China manufacturing facility, located at the company’s Zhangjiagang site in JiangSu Province, approximately 98 kilometers from Shanghai. City government officials and employees took part in the groundbreaking event.

Currently, the Vénissieux, France location that Bosch Solar Energy plans to set up as a PV module assembly plant is being used as diesel system location where common-rail injection pumps are manufactured. As the demand for such products has declined, Bosch began looking for a new use of the location and eventually, the company decided to bring their assembly plant to the locale.

Wacker Chemie says the 15,000MT facility will be completed by the end of 2013.

Columbus, Indiana is set to welcome a new kid in town found in the form of NuSun. The company is a solar panel manufacturer that prides itself in the building and assembling of U.S. made nanocoated crystalline-silicon PV panels. NuSun will be putting US$8.9 million towards the purchase and set-up of their new Indiana facility, which is slated to begin production in mid-2011.

IB Vogt and Sonthalia have renewed their partnership wherein IB Vogt will embark on a concept study and provide engineering services for a PV factory in Falta Solar Hub area of India. The PV factory is expected to be completed between 2011 and 2012 and is part of the Solar Mission that the Indian government approved for the generation of 20MW of solar power in India by 2022. The size of the contract has not been disclosed by either party.

Emcore and San’an Optoelectronics Company have come together for an investment and cooperation agreement with the Huainan municipal government. Under the agreement, Emcore and San’an will register and operate their joint venture (JV), Suncore Photovoltaics, in Huainan City for the production of CPV components and systems for terrestrial solar power applications.

The Greater Toronto area will be home to a new solar panel manufacturing facility courtesy of Eclipsall Energy. The company is investing over CAN$10 million for the 64MWp plant, which is anticipated to be operational during the first half of 2011. The need for expansion of the manufacturing line will be evaluated later in 2011.

MEMC is to join forces with Flextronics to produce PV panels to be used by SunEdison on a range of forthcoming projects. The MEMC-branded panels will be manufactured at Flextronics' production facility in Newmarket, Ontario, with work scheduled to begin during Q2 2011.

MiaSolé has begun the full use of Camstar’s SolarSuite enterprise software in its manufacturing line. The company advised that it looked to use Camstar’s software to help improve its solar operations and increase its product quality and reliability.