Modules

While third-party outsourcing of solar PV module assembly has been a constant feature of the PV industry for many years, the landscape of suppliers and the country of manufacturing has changed radically in the past two years, and will continue to do so out to the end of 2018.

In this week's Movers & Shakers, PV Tech reports mostly on good news, with new appointments in sales, public policy, asset management and business development. However, Texas' Mission Solar Energy has announced its second wave of big job cuts - this time slashing 170 jobs as the company realigns its objectives to purely module assembly.

While there is no shortage of leading indicators in the PV industry that can be used to predict future trends in manufacturing and across the various companies involved in this space, one of the most pertinent ones relates to capital expenditure (or capex).

US-based PV module manufacturer Mission Solar is to cut its existing workforce by a further 58% after closing its solar cell production lines at its facilities in San Antonio, Texas in October 2016.

In the past few days, we have featured some of the key trends in the solar industry during 2016, including the changing face of c-Si cell spending and the strong capex into new facilities in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The technology split of solar cells produced in 2016 was also reviewed, showing the resilience of p-type multi and the factors that have been holding back further market-share gains for p-type mono.

Yingli Green Energy the eighth largest PV module manufacturer in 2016, according to the latest PV Tech rankings (by shipments), is to supply an unnamed customer in Australia with 13.3MW of its 72-cell 1500V series modules.

Yesterday, we exclusively revealed the top-10 solar cell producers for 2016. In the second part of our top-10 series, we can now reveal for the first time the top-10 module suppliers to the solar industry for 2016.

Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider Celestica said it was winding down solar module assembly operations at its Toronto, Ontario, Canada production plant in the first quarter of 2017.

Lightweight PV module system start-up Beamreach Solar is heading for bankruptcy and liquidation according to Greentech Media.

Integrated PV manufacturer and project developer ReneSola said it planned to undertake a reverse stock split in February, 2017 to restore its compliance with the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) minimum US$1.0 stock price rules.