Manufacturing

US thin-film module manufacturer First Solar has signed a deal with Spanish developer Matrix Renewables to supply 2.1GW of thin-film modules.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) – a US utility headquartered in Knoxville – has ordered 279MW of First Solar’s cadmium telluride thin-film solar PV modules to outfit its Lawrence County Solar Project in Alabama, due to come online in 2027.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to release US$20 million in funding for solar waste reduction and lifecycle technologies, including US$8 million of funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Module manufacturer Meyer Burger has planned to build a solar cell plant in Colorado, the US, with an initial annual capacity of 2GW.

The Australian government has announced AU$50 million (US$33.7 million) in investment to develop renewable energy supply chains – notably for solar and energy storage – in the Indo-Pacific.

Trina Solar will continue the shift from producing p-type to n-type products, while it aims to base its manufacturing and operations purely on renewable energy by 2030. 

A new steel mill in Temple, Texas will supply steel tubing to solar tracker supplier Array Technologies for use in its deployments at utility-scale PV projects in the US.

Fraunhofer ISE has led research on the world’s most efficient small organic solar cell, with a conversion efficiency of 15.8%

There are currently over 40GW of Chinese-made solar modules in storage across Europe with a cumulative value of around €7 billion (US$7.8 billion), according to data from research firm Rystad Energy.

Terabase has raised US$25 million for its terafab project, which aims to increase the number of automated processes in solar manufacturing.