JA Solar Holdings’ financial results for its first quarter 2011 have revealed a profitable quarter that even surpassed some Wall Street analysts’ expectations. The company posted total revenue for the quarter of US$556.4 million, which, although shows a 5.5% sequential decrease from 2010’s fourth quarter results of US$588.9 million, still comes in 91.2% higher in a year-over-year comparison with 2010’s first quarter US$290.9 million result.
SolarBridge Technologies’ plans to increase the production capacity to over 70MW for its Pantheon microinverter have reached a promising new level with the beginning of the microinverter’s volume production at Celestica’s facility in Dongguan, China. SolarBridge further reveled that it has opened an office in Shenzen, China to support manufacturing and operations with a staff that specializes in manufacturing, test engineering and logistics.
JSW Green Energy has placed an order for 500kW of United Solar’s thin-film laminates to help power a portfolio of planned on-grid rooftop projects in India. These installations are the latest signal of JSW’s intent to establish itself as one of India’s premier private power producers.
Natcore Technology scientists working at Ohio State University have continued to make progress on the development of the company's liquid-phase deposition (LPD) process, demonstrating how it can be used to apply an antireflective coating to textured solar cells as well as standard planar cells. The company said this could help open the door for the industry to achieve even further wafer thickness reductions by eliminating the thermal vacuum AR coating process.
Later this year, DuPont Microcircuit Materials (MCM) is expecting to commercially launch a new version of its Solamet brand of PV metallization pastes that are claimed to significantly reduce the silver (Ag) content. MCM plans a new product that will reduce the silver content by 10%, having accelerated development efforts that should at a later time see a 20% reduction in silver content, all designed to be near drop-in replacements for current products.
Applied Energy Technologies (AET) is further developing its solar-mounting solutions production with the opening of its new 43,100 square foot manufacturing and warehouse facility in Maumee, Ohio. The new facility includes a 41,600 square foot manufacturing and warehouse space, along with 1,500 square feet of office space and triples AET’s US production capacity.
With the home content rules for PV installations in place in Ontario, Canada a growing number of suppliers have been forced to manufacture products in the region for customers to obtain the feed-in tariffs. Although not mentioning its manufacturing partner, Conergy is the latest module manufacturer to establish production in Ontario
Ion implant market leader Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates will be acquired by Applied Materials for approximately US$4.9 billion. The deal is said to enhance Applied’s product offerings for transistor formation for front-end semiconductor processing as IC process complexity, transistor scaling and 3-D design implementation require complete and integrated product and process offerings. The deal also offers Applied new market opportunities in solar, display and light emitting diodes, where Varian has made significant investments in recent years to broaden implant technologies market opportunities. Varian reported last week second-quarter 2011 revenue of US$330 million.
Jun Xu and his team of researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a 3-D nanocone-based solar cell, which is said to enhance the light-to-power conversion efficiency by almost 80%. The solar cell is constructed using n-type nanocones made from zinc oxide, which perform as the junction framework and electron conductor , and are enveloped by a p-type semiconductor consisting of polycrystalline cadmium telluride, which act as the principal photon absorber channel and hole conductor.
Solar investments were hot in the first quarter, even if overall PV market demand cooled considerably; according to the latest quarter report on US venture capital (VC) investment in cleantech companies from Ernst & Young. Solar-based companies received US$362.7 million in new investments in the first quarter of 2011, up 162% compared to the same period a year ago. This accounted for 39% of the total dollars raised for the quarter, which is compiled from data provided by Dow Jones VentureSource.
