Thin-Film

A joint venture firm has been created between First Solar and BELECTRIC to pursue the building of PV power plants in Europe, North Africa and the US.

In reporting improving sales in the first-half of 2013, Chinese thin-film equipment supplier and module manufacturer, Hanergy expects a ‘wide window of opportunity’ in Europe to gain module sales and market share after the anti-dumping dispute between the EU and China has been resolved.

Hanergy Holding is transferring the intellectual property (IP) rights to Solibro’s copper-indium-gallium-selenium (CIGS) thin-film technology to subsidiary, Apollo Kunming.

Solar Frontier, a subsidiary of the Japanese Shell Group, Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K, is celebrating the six month performance of a 10.5MW array in Saudi Arabia.

Two engineers working on First Solar's Desert Sunlight Solar Farm were killed yesterday when their plane crashed near the construction site close to Joshua Tree National Park.

Scientists at the Empa Institute in Switzerland claim to have achieved 11.5% conversion efficiency for a CdTe solar cell by doping it with copper.

The strategy to diversify its business away from dependence on sectors such as solar is proving to be a significant success for equipment supplier, Manz AG.

First Solar will start a 100MW manufacturing line for crystalline silicon cells for the residential distributed market from the end of next year with production scaling from 2015, it was revealed yesterday.

South Korean business conglomerate SK Group has invested a further US$19 million into Texas-based CIGS thin-film PV module manufacturer HelioVolt.

Leading PV energy provider (PVEP), First Solar, has claimed to be the first thin-film module manufacturer to have received ‘Thresher' test certification from TÜV Rheinland.