China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has published a draft version of proposed feed-in tariff (FiT) levels for ground mount and distributed generation PV power plants for 2017 that could lead to significant cuts to both sectors and overall curtailment of installations.
Leading PV manufacturing equipment supplier Meyer Burger Technology announced a major restructuring plan to become more flexible to market dynamics by lowering its operating cost base by CHF 50 million per annum and reducing its workforce by around 16% by the end of 2016.
China-based metal casting components firm Jete Power Holdings has acquired a 39% stake in China-based CIGS thin-film start-up Dongtai Energy Technology Company via the shares in the holding company, Novel Sino Group Holdings.
Major Korea-based polysilicon producer OCI Company said it would make a final decision on acquiring Tokuyama’s Malaysian polysilicon operations by the end of March 2017.
US-based solar module technology firm Solaria Corporation has filed suit against GCL Solar Energy, Inc., a subsidiary of GCL-Poly Energy Holdings due to claims of IP theft and breaches of Non-Disclosure Agreements that resulted in the GCL producing PV modules using its proprietary technology that is protected by over 100 patents.
Wuxi Suntech, the PV module manufacturing arm of renewable energy group, Shunfeng International Clean Energy (SFCE) has secured insurance from Munich Re to support its 25-year module warranty scheme.
SCHMID Group is offering its ‘Inline System’ for alkaline texturing that provides a lower cost option for PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Contact) cell architectures that reduces the consumption of chemicals.
European scientists have teamed from imec, KIT and ZSW to fabricate a thin-film solar module (lab) stack made up of perovskite and Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) with a conversion efficiency of 17.8%, which surpasses the highest efficiencies of separate perovskite and CIGS modules.