Knouse Foods has prides itself on striving to produce quality foods while maintaining an environmentally conscious manufacturing facility. Recently at its Peach Glen, Pennsylvania manufacturing facility Knouse Foods activated a 19-acre project that uses over 14,000 solar panels. The project is owned and operated by the company and is anticipated to supplant more than four million kilowatt hours of purchases electricity yearly.
Baraclit, an Italian prefabricated roofing developer for industrial and commercial industries, is sporting a new 2.5MW solar installation at its SolarLAB2 open-air solar laboratory in Bibbiena, Italy. Canadian Solar and Energy Resources partnered for the project, which aims to be a laboratory used to study the incorporation of photovoltaic technology on prefabricated roofing.
Soltec Renewable Energies and Shikun & Binui Solaria are set to build a 6.7MW solar power plant in the disused copper mines of Timna Valley in southern Israel.
Parabel has been commissioned to develop one of Europe’s largest solar systems, the 41MW park in Brandenburg, Germany. The park, situated on the site of a former military training ground, is currently in the first planning and approval phase, with construction expected to take place between June and August; the final phase will increase output to 90MW.
First, Tessera Solar sold its 850MW Calico Solar project to K Road Sun in late December and now the company has announced that its 709MW Imperial Valley solar project has been bought by AES Solar, who, like K Road, intends to convert the CSP project into a PV installation.
The 9REN Group recently closed on a funding lease from UniCredit Leasing that will go towards the financing of the Pacione 1 PV power plant. The Italian PV plant, located in the Taranto province, is complete and holds a 6.5MW capacity. Grid connection is expected to occur in the next few weeks.
With significant ingot and wafer capacity expansions, notably underway in Asia, the demand for slurry recycling is working in tandem. With a claimed 40% market share, SiC Processing is raising €100 million via a bond issue to further expand operations in Asia and other regions.
Lux Research’s new report, “Shorting Out the Myths of Solar Power Electronics: What Fits and What Fails,” has examined the power electronics options that are becoming increasingly available to solar installers and project developers in order to help establish what technologies actually offer the best performance and lowest cost in the residential, commercial and utility solar divisions.
Arizona Public Service (APS) is expanding upon its AZ Sun program with the development of a new 17MW PV facility in Gila Bend, Arizona. With the Paloma Solar Plant, APS’s AZ Sun program will have committed 83MW of solar capacity out of the 100MW it aims to finance and own upon the program’s completion, which is intended for sometime in 2014. First Solar was contracted by APS to design and build the Paloma Solar Plant and expects to have it online by September.
Rumours of a tie-up with Samsung have proved true, with the news that MEMC will establish a new joint-venture firm with Samsung Fine Chemicals to produce polysilicon for the PV industry. The agreement between SFC and MEMC's affiliate, MEMC Singapore, includes building a 10,000MT plant in Ulsan, Korea, close to an SFC chemical plant. Production ramp is targeted for 2013.
