Major materials science company, Royal DSM has sold its Resins & Functional Materials (RFM) businesses including the coatings activities of DSM Advanced Solar, known for its anti-reflective (AR) resin coatings for solar glass and on-field PV power plant upgrading, to rival Covestro AG for a cash sum of around €1.4 billion.
A new company, EnCORE PV has been established to build own and operate a 1GW heterojunction (HJ) plant in the region of Kaliningrad, located along the Baltic coast between Poland and Lithuania.
Leading ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member JinkoSolar has made a major revision to its PV module assembly capacity expansion plans for 2020, intending to nearly double its nameplate assembly capacity to a new goal of 30GW by the end of 2020.
Hangzhou First Applied Materials’ board has approved plans to increase its production capacity for PV films and backsheets.
Major polysilicon and merchant cell producer, Tongwei has secured a monocrystalline wafer supply deal from LONGi Green Energy (LONGi Group) that increases its wafer needs by 1 billion wafers to 2.6 billion as the cell producer plans to have more than 40GW of solar cell capacity in 2021.
PV equipment supplier RENA technologies has secured its largest ever single order from a major PV manufacturer in Asia as part of the customer's new 15GW PERC cell capacity expansion plans.
The US should aim for 100GW of annual domestic renewable energy manufacturing capacity by the end of the decade, with a focus on solar, wind and energy storage, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has said in a new report.
Coming out of stealth-mode, US-based integrated PV panel manufacturing start-up, Violet Power intends to disrupt the PV industry with in-house production of high-efficiency IBC (Interdigitated Back Contact) solar cells. The company will use cell-to-module ‘flex circuit’ and thermal plastic encapsulant technology in a glass/glass configuration that will have a solar panel warranty of 50 years, more than three times the average in the industry, today.
Major polysilicon and solar wafer producer GCL-Poly has reported a total loss for the first half of 2020 of US$281.8 million, due to a reduction of more than 50% in polysilicon production and record low ASPs (Average Selling Prices) on weak demand.
Leading monocrystalline wafer producer and ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member, LONGi Green Energy has defied the downward pricing pressure on its core wafer business and weak global demand, driven by the impact of COVID-19 on the solar industry supply chain to report record revenue, profit, and module shipments in the first half of 2020.
Liam Stoker and Andy Colthorpe return for the August 2020 episode of the Solar Media podcast, reflecting on the biggest news stories from the global solar and energy storage ecosystems.
Major polysilicon and solar wafer producer GCL-Poly has warned investors that it expects to make a net loss of at least RMB1.5 billion (US$217 million) for the first half of 2020 as market demand and other issues impacted profitability.
China-based PV module manufacturer ZNShine Solar plans to more than double its manufacturing capacity by 10GW over the next two years, focusing on large-area, high-efficiency modules to improve its competitive position.
‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member Trina Solar is planning its first major solar cell manufacturing expansion in recent years, driven by its migration to large-area PV modules using the 210mm wafer size as it ramps production of its high-performance mainstream ‘Vertex’ Series modules in 2021 onwards.
Major polysilicon producer Daqo New Energy expects polysilicon demand to outstrip supply for at least the next 18 months, due to the lack of new polysilicon capacity and strong demand as a growing number of ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) members continue to add in-house monocrystalline ingot and wafer production.
