Solarbuzz has announced Finlay Colville as the new senior analyst who will be in charge of improving the company’s reporting on solar manufacturing equipment, which includes technologies and trends and forecasts in the solar industry. The new appointment comes after Solarbuzz’s recent acquisition by the NPD Group last month.
The latest slew of announcements from various sectors of the solar manufacturing supply chain to establish partial or complete production outsourcing is no accident and a trend that will continue grow, according to iSuppli. The market research firm noted that the latest SunPower news of a contract manufacturing deal with major electronics manufacturing services firm Flextronics is only representative of the early stages of a boom, especially in module assembly outsourcing.
Electronics manufacturing services company Flextronics will utilize production floor space in its Silicon Valley operations for a 75MW module assembly facility for SunPower. The Silicon Valley-based PV manufacturer is carrying out a solar cell capacity expansion program at its own facilities in Asia. The new subcontract production should be operational by the end of the year and will service module installations throughout the Western U.S. from its Milpitas facility. Approximately 100 jobs will be created at the facility.
The German solar industry’s research and development efforts into advanced solar cell technology will be given a boost of €100 million, after Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet approved plans, according to Reuters. The move was made, according to the report, to weaken resistance by members of the lower house of parliament (Bundesrat), particularly from eastern states such as Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, to a proposed 16% extra solar feed-in tariff cut. There are a a significant number of PV manufacturers located in these regions, and many have openly opposed the FIT cut suggested by Merkel’s government.
MCP Group, a specialty chemicals producer of thin-film metals such as indium, gallium, selenium, and tellurium, is combining manufacturing operations into Atlumin Energy to streamline operations and meet growing demand, especially from the thin-film PV industry. Copy-exact processes at its U.K. operations in Wellingborough are to be expanded to its Sunnyvale, CA, facilities.
Product Briefing Outline: Due to technology partnerships and longtime experience RENA has been able to optimize the handling and process sequence for the complete process chain after wafer sawing with its ‘Wafer Line’ system. With this complete system, 200MW production per annum is possible.
Flextronics has dedicated 1 million square feet to create a "Clean Tech Super Site" at its established facility in Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia. The electronic manufacturing services company already has a range of solar photovoltaics module production capabilities operational at the PTP location, with development plans to increase its site capacity to support 1GW of module production over the next two years.
Recently announced capacity expansion plans from the majority of major China-based PV manufacturers and polysilicon producers is having a knock-on effect in the supply chain with gases specialist Linde Group announcing a new round of long-term gas supply contracts in the country. Linde LienHwa (LLH) has secured multi-million US dollar contracts from companies including GS Solar, Parity Solar, CNPV Solar Power SA, General Solar Power and Argus Power.
Applied Materials announced last week that it has opened the newly expanded Tainan Manufacturing Center in southern Taiwan, a nearly 15,000 square-meter facility that the company says will enhance its capability to serve thin-film solar photovoltaic and flat-panel display (FPD) customers in Asia. The center employs approximately 150 people and is expected to build and ship about 100 new plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and physical vapor deposition (PVD) production systems this year
Hitachi High-Technologies and XeroCoat have entered into a strategic partnership for the distribution of XeroCoat’s antireflective coating solutions for solar photovoltaic modules in Japan and China. The agreement gives HHT, through its energy and environmental solutions unit, the right to resell XeroCoat’s equipment systems and materials into the two key Asian markets. XeroCoat also told PV Tech that it has established a demonstration pilot line at an Asian glass manufacturer.
