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.
A 1MW concentrator photovoltaic power plant built on six acres of land formerly reserved for baby pistachio trees has been activated and is providing electricity to the Southern California Edison regional grid in Central California. The site, which features SolFocus CPV systems, is located on the Nichols Farms property in Hanford. Sol Orchard developed the project, with Bechtel Power providing the engineering, procurement, and construction expertise.
Ascent Solar Technologies will be changing up its work strategy with a new CEO who will lead the company in the pursuit of a new market focus. Farhad Moghadam will be stepping down from Ascent Solar for the pursuit of other interests and opportunities with his position as CEO and president being filled by Ron Eller. Eller has been a board member at Ascent Solar for the past two years and has a 25-year background in technology executive management.
Despatch Industries has successfully completed the latest set of enhancements and testing for its CF Series firing furnace. Improvements to the maximum belt speed have increased up to 300 inches per minute while thermal transfer methods, notably in the cooling sector, have allowed the firing furnace to reach higher maximum ramp rates. Despatch notes that enrichments to its CF Series allow it to reach a maximum ramp rate up to 200°C for heating and cooling.
New Energy Technologies has entered a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the U. S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for the advancement of New Energy’s SolarWindow technology.
Apparent success with the R&D stage of the joint development project between Tata Steel and Dyesol to commercialise dye solar cells onto steel sheeting is said to be moving to a pre-industrial phase. The £11m project, which received a £5 million technology grant from the Welsh Assembly in Wales, is due to be completed in June 2011.
Odersun and Lithodecor have come together for the production of solar façades in the form of an Airtec PV system. Odersun will supply its CIS solar modules for Lithodecor’s Airtec system making Airtec façades available with photovoltaic solutions. This new façade will join Lithodecor’s existing glass and natural stone veneer solutions. Further, since Odersun produces system-compatible and project-specific solar modules for BIPV projects, Lithodecor anticipates being able to offer both standard system sizes as well as individual made-to-order solutions.
An annual survey of cell manufacturers published in the March 2011 issue of Photon International highlights a significant increase in solar cell production that could result in new capacity growing by 80% in 2011 and roughly reach a global capacity of 67GW. This comes on the back of reported cell production figures reaching 27.2GW in 2010, up 118%, compared with 12.5GW produced in 2009.
Although there were no specifics mentioned in the financial forecast for 2011 provided by Q-Cells as it announced full year financial results, sales are set to be at around the same level as last year. As previously reported, Q-Cells sales increased by 70% to €1.35 billion in 2010. In its annual report, 2011 sales guidance is between €1.3 billion and €1.5 billion.
