Continuing its PV equipment company consolidation attempts, Meyer Burger will acquire Roth & Rau in a friendly takeover. Meyer Burger said it had already acquired a total of 11.3% of the share capital of Roth & Rau AG from the founders and key shareholders. Meyer Burger is offering bearer shares in Roth & Rau at €22 per share in cash, a premium of around 41% compared with the volume-weighted average share price of the past three months. The total deal is worth approximately €356.6 million.
Wacker Chemie's long-planned construction of a 15,000MT per annum polysilicon plant in Cleveland, Tennessee, has officially broken ground. The project is said to cost around US$1.5 billion and will create some 650 new jobs when the plant become operational in late 2013. With other planned capacity expansions in Germany, Wacker reiterated that it expects to reach an annual polysilicon capacity of 67,000MT in 2014.
United Solar and Advanced Green Technologies (AGT) have finished work on a new 807kW system spanning six school rooftops in New York’s South Country School District. Each school will generate around 158,000 kWh of electricity per annum and save over US$25,000 in the process.
Just a few miles from First Solar’s manufacturing operations in Perrysburg, Ohio, CdTe thin-film start-up Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (also known as WK Solar) has purchased a module lamination system from Bürkle.
With the acquisition of US-based CdTe thin-film start-up PrimeStar now behind GE, the conglomerate is planning to expand its investments in PV with the building of a 400MW manufacturing plant, potentially bringing its total investment in the sector to over US$600 million.
Solar Frontier has signed a distribution contract with Italy’s DW Europe to help expand its CIS solar module marketing and sales base in southern Europe. The agreement will enable Solar Frontier to establish a comprehensive distribution network and presence within the burgeoning European solar sector.
This month’s international trade fair Society of Vacuum Coaters (SCV) will see Fraunhofer FEP launch its new transparent conducting oxide (TCO) layer. The titanium dioxide-based layer, which can be applied to PV glass layers, has similar conductivity and transparency to other indium-free materials, but also boasts greater resistance to chemicals and the ability to withstand temperatures up to 550°C.
OPEL Solar International, the joint venture between OPEL Solar and Ecotech Environmental Technology, has been awarded its first order, just over three months after its formation. The company will provide 5MW of its HCPV panels and dual axis trackers to one of China’s electric power companies. OPEL Solar International initially expected the order to be for 2MW, but looks at the doubled purchase order as a way for it to break into the HCPV market in East Asia. Deliveries should start in the second quarter of 2011 and be completed during 2012.
Belectric and Sun & Life are staking their claim in what they call the largest solar power plant in Saudi Arabia. The two companies are partnering on a 10MW PV carport system at Dhahran’s North Park offices of Saudi Aramco. The large-scale power plant will cover all of the 4,500 parking spaces and feed into the public grid by the end of this year.
LDK Solar is expanding its manufacturing base by opening a new cell production facility in Hefei City, China. The plant, located in the Anhui Province, will employ 2,014 and bring LDK's annual production capacity to 570MW.
