There are many key metrics worth listing at the end of each year in the solar industry. In terms of the upstream/manufacturing side, two jump out as leading indicators for the year ahead.
The first is to rank the top-10 producers of the solar cells during the year.
Major Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider Flex has acknowledged the scale of the impact on its business with the bankruptcy last year of its largest solar energy client, SunEdison.
Brussels-headquartered consultancy and software service company 3E Data Services has launched a satellite-based solar irradiance mapping service which can be used to assess the likely profitability and performance of planned solar PV projects.
This week's segment mainly focuses on career moves in the US - featuring some of the nation's biggest energy players, including SunPower, NEXTracker and the SEIA. There is also news from key energy agencies including the IEA, FERC and the New York PSC.
New analysis by the in-house market research team at PV-Tech’s parent company Solar Media Ltd. can exclusively reveal that Hanwha Q-CELLS was the number 1 solar PV cell manufacturer in 2016, based on megawatts of cells produced in-house across the year.
Leading PV manufacturing equipment supplier Meyer Burger Technology has announced orders worth over US$146 million in the last four months, which includes a new order worth CHF 18 million (US$18.03 million) for its PERC cell technology and SiNA cell coating systems from two customers based in Asia.
Taiwan state-owned utility Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) has delayed plans to commission 500MW of solar by 2020 by two years, now scheduling 300MWp of that solar to be online by 2022.
Taiwan-based multicrystalline wafer producer Green Energy Technology (GET) has said had terminated a sub-contracting wafer supply deal with another Taiwan-based wafer producer, Eversol Corporation
