The Greater Toronto area will be home to a new solar panel manufacturing facility courtesy of Eclipsall Energy. The company is investing over CAN$10 million for the 64MWp plant, which is anticipated to be operational during the first half of 2011. The need for expansion of the manufacturing line will be evaluated later in 2011.
Suss MicroTec and Rolith have come together to use Rolith’s disruptive nanolithography method in order to develop and construct nanostructuring equipment. Rolith’s nanolithography technology uses near-field optical lithography with cylindrically shaped rolling masks. Sub-wavelength resolution is reached by a phase-interference effect or plasmonic enhancement printing structures. Rolith advises that a continued operation yields a high throughput with low cost production.
MEMC is to join forces with Flextronics to produce PV panels to be used by SunEdison on a range of forthcoming projects. The MEMC-branded panels will be manufactured at Flextronics' production facility in Newmarket, Ontario, with work scheduled to begin during Q2 2011.
MiaSolé has begun the full use of Camstar’s SolarSuite enterprise software in its manufacturing line. The company advised that it looked to use Camstar’s software to help improve its solar operations and increase its product quality and reliability.
Intevac has bought Solar Implant Technologies (SIT) for an undisclosed fee. Intevac hope the acquisition of SIT, a California-based solar module design firm, will enable them to reduce solar cell manufacturing costs.
A single-junction organic photovoltaic solar cell with a surface area of 1 square centimetre has been demonstrated by Konarka Technologies to have a 8.3% efficiency.
