Capital expenditure (capex) for c-Si manufacturing (covering ingot/wafer and cell/module stages) is forecast at approx. US$9 billion in 2019, consistent with levels seen during 2017 and 2018.
LONGi Green Energy Technology Co, the largest monocrystalline wafer producer has announced major plans to further expand its ingot and wafer capacity past 2020.
NEXTracker has introduced its smart single-axis solar tracker family, 'NX Gemini’, which enables two-module-in-portrait (2P) tracking of either monofacial or bifacial PV modules. The next-generation two-module-in-portrait (2P) tracker is optimized for customer sites with hard soils, challenging terrain, irregular parcel shapes and high-wind requirements.
Delivering 103MWp Midden-Groningen within eight months involved installing 315,000 panels, setting up biodiversity-friendly areas and linking the plant directly to the Dutch grid.
US court blocks administration’s scrapping of Section 201 tariff exemption to give Invenergy time to wage legal battle against u-turn, a dispute the judge feels Invenergy is likely to win.
Major polysilicon producer Wacker Chemie has directly blamed the Chinese governments support of its domestic polysilicon manufacturers for the need to make a major write-down of its polysilicon production facilities in Germany and the US with a massive €750 million impairment charge in its FY 2019.
PV Evolution Labs (PVEL), Lloyd's of London syndicate Ariel Re (a member of Argo Group), and Beecher Carlson Insurance Services, LLC have launched PV PlantProtect. This is the first-of-its-kind risk mitigation and insurance program using technical due diligence best practices to improve solar project economics for developers.
‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) leader, JinkoSolar has supplied 40MW of its ultra-high efficiency Cheetah HC 60 solar modules to developer Obton for the recently completed Almelo project in the Netherlands.
Single-axis solar tracker firm, Soltec has reported a range of bifacial module and tracker performance results from its Bifacial Tracker Evaluation Center (BiTEC) in Livermore, California, showing an advantage in using a 2P configuration and an overall bifacial gain of 15.7%.
The German-China partnership between Manz and China Energy Investment Group Co., Shanghai Electric Group Co and Future Science City, now known as NICE Solar Energy, have set a new CIGS thin-film module conversion efficiency record of 17.6 %.
