Power Plants

The Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has approved a pre-feasibility study for the construction of the first phase of First Solar's 30MW thin-film solar power plant located in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. This phase marks the beginning of 2GW which are to be implemented in the area through 2019.

MEMC Electronic Materials reported a 31% sequential increase in solar materials sales, primarily from wafers, in its third-quarter results. A 20% increase in shipments and modest improvement in wafer ASPs helped sales for the group reach sales of US$503.1 million, up 12.2% from US$448.3 million in the second quarter of 2010. Its subsidiary, SunEdison, reported sales of US$21.5 million and has 1,023MW in its project pipeline, of which 155MW is under construction.

SolarBridge Technologies has chosen Celestica to manufacture its SolarBridge Pantheon microinverter. The companies have been working together for over a year, having completed design for manufacture (DFM), design for test (DFT) and qualification builds at Celestica's facility in Toronto, Canada.

First Reserve has closed its financial facilities agreement for the Rovigo solar plant at €276 million. The private equity firm bought the 70MW PV plant from Sun Edison, with whom they had previously established a joint venture, this past September. Banco Santander, Unicredit Corporate Banking, Credit Agricole, Dexia Crediop, Natixis and Societe Generale were additional lenders with First Reserve for the financing agreement.

RMT will be entering the Canadian renewable energy market as RMT Canada Construction and offer site development support, engineering and construction services for wind and solar energy facilities. RMT has been in the designing and building business for wind energy since 1996 and currently has their engineering, procurement and construction services utilized at over 429MW of wind energy and 340MW of solar energy projects.

3W Power Holdings, the holding company of AEG Power Solutions (AEG PS), has reported its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2010. While Q3'10 is typically a weak quarter cyclically for AEG PS, due to traditionally slower trading in Europe in August, the solar segment still came out on top.

Ascent Solar has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with 'The Energy and Resource Institute' (TERI), based in New Delhi, India. Under the terms of the agreement, TERI will perform testing and performance evaluation of Ascent's flexible thin-film CIGS modules as well as looking at the feasibility of including these modules for TERI's flagship program 'Lighting a Billion Lives' (LaBL).

Concentrator photovoltaics developer SolFocus will partner with Vision Electro Mechanical to build the first commercial CPV power plant in Saudi Arabia. The initial project will be the initial project in a series of Saudi solar power stations planned by Vision (a subsidiary of Construction Projects Holding Co. [CPC]).

Good Energies and NIBC Infrastructure Partners have signed an agreement with Q-Cells SE for the acquisition of Finsterwalde II and Finsterwalde III, the solar photovoltaics plants located in Brandenburg, Germany. Together with Q-Cells' Finsterwalde I, which stands adjacent, the three Finsterwalde projects have a capacity of 81MWp, forming the largest operational solar PV plant in the world.

Neo Solar Power (NSP) has entered into a three-year wafer supply contract with GCL Poly.