Social media giant, Facebook, is entering the solar cogeneration arena with help from Cogenra Solar, which will be developing a renewable hot water and electricity solar cogeneration array on the rooftop of Facebook’s Menlo Park campus fitness centre. Cogenra advised that this is not only Facebook’s first venture into solar energy at its corporate campus, but that the company will be the first corporate campus to use solar cogeneration.
A fruit and vegetable distribution centre in the south of France is now the site of the world’s largest building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) system, after 97,000 Solaire France Sunstyle PV roofing tiles were installed on the Saint Charles International in Perpignan.
With help from REC Solar and Gehrlicher Solar, IKEA will be installing approximately 10,000 solar panels across the rooftops of its Draper, Utah, New Haven Connecticut and Portland, Oregon stores. The three new installations will generate 3,156MWh of electricity per year and bring IKEA’s solar program to 23 store installations in the US.
Following the many obstacles which blocked SunPower’s route to completing its plant in San Luis Obispo County, it seems that now the path is clear and plans can move forward.
CNPV Solar Power has become the next target of accusations levied at it from The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM). The China-based integrated manufacturer of solar PV products has denied the allegations made in a trade action against suppliers of crystalline silicon PV cells and modules from the People's Republic of China.
In the fourth consecutive Schott Solar Barometer survey, conducted by Kelton Research on behalf of Schott Solar, US-based respondents expressed a significant support for the use and development of solar energy and federal investments for solar. According to Kelton, nine out of 10 Americans, or 89%, responded that they felt it was important for the US to develop and use solar energy. Breaking the results down by political party, 80% of Republicans, 90% of Independents and 94% of Democrats, agreed for furthering solar in the US.
Work will begin next year on the first phase of the 500MW Desertec concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Morocco, according to German newspaper Süddeutschen Zeitung. The initial development stage will cost around €600 million and add 150MW of capacity to the yet-to-be-named site.
LDK Solar subsidiary LDK Silicon & Chemical Technology has been invited by the City Government of Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, to construct a 30,000MT polysilicon manufacturing facility in the region’s Jinsan Development Zone. The groundbreaking ceremony took place today, and the additional capacity will take LDK Silicon’s total polysilicon production capacity to 55,000MT per annum by the end of 2013.
Astronergy, a unit of Chint Group, advised that Munich RE had selected its thin-film amorphous microcrystalline silicon PV panels for a 1.65MW solar project in Thailand. The plant was commissioned on October 28 with Astronergy noting that various Chint subsidiary components were being used for including inverters and BOS system elements.
Automations Tooling Systems (ATS) has announced its Photowatt France subsidiary is implementing a reduction of work days program. The modules and inverter manufacturing facility based in Bourgoin-Jallieu, France, will be operating at approximately one-third of its production capacity.
