Yesterday, at Hannover Messe, Germany, Phono Solar and SYBAC solar signed a five-year purchase agreement for €300 million, which equates to an output of 500MW. Last month, Phono Solar, a monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar modules manufacturer, passed TÜV Rheinland’s ammonia corrosion test.
Q-Cells has completed the construction of the largest European PV project, located in Brandenburg-Briest. The construction of the 91MW solar park took only eight weeks and the project on the former 200 hectares military base in the east of Germany is equipped with approximately 383,000 Q-Cells crystalline PV modules, with a total capacity of 91MWp.
Intel Vietnam has announced the opening of the biggest solar power plant in Vietnam to date, located at Saigon's High-Tech Park. Intel’s US$1.1 million project is equipped with 1,092 solar panels and 21 adapters. It has an output of 321,000kWh per year.
Following a continued downturn in operating results, Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) will close its 650MW multicrystalline wafer plant at Herøya, Norway by the second quarter of 2012. The closure of the Herøya plant, in the south of the country, will signal the end of all REC’s wafer operations in Norway after the closure of the Glomfjord monocrystalline plant on March 20, 2012.
Large-scale solar in India was given a showcase last week when Honourable Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, dedicated over 600MW of commissioned solar projects to the nation. The celebration of Indian solar innovation and ambition was delivered to over 10,000 people at the Charanka Solar Park – a 200MW facility in the North Western state of Gujarat, close to the Pakistan border.
Scandinavian solar power company REC has sold a German ground mounted 6MW PV plant in Bitterfeld to two Chorus Group investors, including Chorus Cleantech. REC took over the project in 2011 from the plant’s former developer, Grüne Energien, and successfully developed, financed and constructed the project with project financing from the Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB). Construction was finished in December 2011 to ensure the project’s eligibility for the higher 2011 FiT.
Solarhybrid Israel, subsidiary of Solarhybrid, recently sold 201MWp of project rights, which it originally bought in January for US$2,391,705, to Summit Energy of Israel. Under the agreement, current liabilities of Solarhybrid Israel amounted to US$398,617.50, while earn-out-payments in connection with the acquisition of the project rights totaled US$5,580,645.
During the latest round of auctions by state-run Karnataka Renewable Energy Development (KREDL), Welspun Group and Sunborne Energy Holdings were awarded contracts to build solar PV plants in Karnataka, India. According to Bloomberg, Welspun plans to build a 7MW PV project while Sunborne will develop a 10MW solar thermal project.
A Japanese government panel is said to be on its way to setting a feed-in tariff of ¥42 per kilowatt hour (approximately US$0.51), according to a Reuters report that in turn cited the Nikkei business daily. The new subsidy scheme is to come into play from July and is a response to the global disapproval of the country’s handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March 2011.
According to a Hindu Business Line report, eight PV developers have been selected to install a total of 60MW in the Indian state of Karnataka.
In total the state will see the installation of 80MW of solar energy, of which 20MW will be solar thermal and 60MW PV energy. The Karnataka Solar Mission aims to install and connect 350MW by the year 2016. The developers were selected in a reverse bidding process. A second set of auctions is scheduled for October.
