While there is no shortage of leading indicators in the PV industry that can be used to predict future trends in manufacturing and across the various companies involved in this space, one of the most pertinent ones relates to capital expenditure (or capex).
US-based PV module manufacturer Mission Solar is to cut its existing workforce by a further 58% after closing its solar cell production lines at its facilities in San Antonio, Texas in October 2016.
In the past few days, we have featured some of the key trends in the solar industry during 2016, including the changing face of c-Si cell spending and the strong capex into new facilities in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The technology split of solar cells produced in 2016 was also reviewed, showing the resilience of p-type multi and the factors that have been holding back further market-share gains for p-type mono.
Sweden-based thin-film equipment specialist Midsummer AB said it had received an order from an undisclosed customer based in Asia for its CIGS, ‘DUO’ solar cell sputtering tool.
Yingli Green Energy the eighth largest PV module manufacturer in 2016, according to the latest PV Tech rankings (by shipments), is to supply an unnamed customer in Australia with 13.3MW of its 72-cell 1500V series modules.
Yesterday, we exclusively revealed the top-10 solar cell producers for 2016. In the second part of our top-10 series, we can now reveal for the first time the top-10 module suppliers to the solar industry for 2016.
Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider Celestica said it was winding down solar module assembly operations at its Toronto, Ontario, Canada production plant in the first quarter of 2017.
Integrated PV manufacturer and project developer ReneSola said it planned to undertake a reverse stock split in February, 2017 to restore its compliance with the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) minimum US$1.0 stock price rules.
There are many key metrics worth listing at the end of each year in the solar industry. In terms of the upstream/manufacturing side, two jump out as leading indicators for the year ahead.
The first is to rank the top-10 producers of the solar cells during the year.
