Manufacturing

5N Plus Corp was given US$500,000 in funding from the State Energy Program of Wisconsin, which will go towards purchasing equipment for the facilitation of the plants solar module recycling and creation of new jobs in DeForest, Wisconsin. The 60,500 square foot facility has a US$4 million investment behind it and is expected to be operational in the next few weeks. Along with its recycling capability, it will also be manufacturing specialty compounds for thin-film PV applications.

Iosil Energy has leased a 30,700 square foot facility from Meritex in Groveport, Ohio, as the location for its pilot manufacturing of high purity polysilicon.

Solarfun has joined JA Solar and Yingli Solar to become the third Chinese crystalline-silicon PV cell manufacturer to sign a licensing agreement with Innovalight for the Sunnyvale, CA-based company's proprietary performance-enhancing nanosilicon ink process.

In August, Oerlikon Solar and Hunan Gongchuang Photovoltaic Science & Technology signed a contract as part of the 60-year celebration for commercial ties between China and Switzerland. Today, as part of that contract, Gongchuang has ordered a 40MW micromorph turnkey production line, which is also known as the FAB 1200. The production line is expected to start mass production by the end of 2011, with around 330,000 solar modules being manufactured per year.

Another CIGS thin-film PV manufacturer has garnered certification for its flexible modules. San Jose-based SoloPower has achieved IEC 61646 and 61730 approvals to go along with the UL 1703 it announced earlier this year, allowing the company to sell its rooftop-focused products in the U.S. and Europe. SoloPower claims to be the first among its peers to obtain both IEC certifications for its flex panels.

Despite the Japanese Government’s concerns over the legality of Ontario’s ‘local content’ feed-in tariff requirements, Sharp’s tandem-junction thin-film modules will be used by SunEdison for two solar parks, totalling 18.5MW, in Norfolk County, Ontario, Canada. The projects (SunE Sky Norfolk I and II) are a joint venture between SkyPower and the MEMC subsidiary, which actually started construction in March this year and is expected to be completed before year-end.

Update: A significant increase in production capacity of its leading-edge ‘Panda’ technology will help boost Yingli Green’s total PV production capacity pass 1.7GW by mid-2011. Yingli Green is adding 600MW of new capacity in each key area of monocrystalline silicon manufacturing, which includes ingots, wafers, cells and modules at its Baoding, China headquarters. A further 100MW will be added to multicrystalline silicon production, in Haikou, Hainan Province, China. Yingli’s

Once a leading in-house solar module manufacturer, BP Solar has further solidified its outsourced manufacturing strategy by awarding JA Solar a monocrystalline and multicrystalline cell supply contract exceeding 185MW. The new supply deal will see 100MW of cells shipped to BP beginning in the first quarter of 2011.

The Stuttgart-based researchers at Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Württemberg, Germany (Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, ZSW) have demonstrated a CIGS solar cell conversion efficiency of 20.3%. The area of the world record cell is 0.5 square centimetres and surpasses their previous record of 20.1%, established in April 2010.

High-purity materials supplier 5N Plus has signed a long-term supply agreement with cadmium-telluride thin-film module producer Abound Solar. Under the terms of the deal, 5N Plus will provide CdTe compounds to be used in the manufacturing of Abound's PV panels.