BlueChip Energy has announced that the Commission of the City of Eustis, Lake County, US, authorized the mayor to execute a commercial lease with the company for 300 acres of land to be developed into a 60MW solar farm. The property, owned by the city, was use for as a wastewater spray field and is no longer needed.
Under a new partnership between eIQ Energy and Boots on the Roof, eIQ Energy has supplied a dozen of its vBoost converter modules to the Boots on the Roof solar training program. The partnership was initiated in January and will see eIQ’s technology featured in the school’s commercial PV construction training program as well as its commercial PV design course.
The tragic death of Amonix CEO Brian Robertson late last year has led to Jan van Dokkum, an executive with venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, becoming interim CEO of the concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar systems company. The Board of Directors at Amonix said it had enlisted an executive search firm and has established a search committee for the selection and appointment of a new CEO.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) said it had added more than 220MW of wind and solar power to its generation mix in 2011, while signing contracts for future delivery of 463MW of new renewable power. PG&E deployed 185MW of solar power in 2011 and said it had secured signed contracts for 200 MW of new solar power in coming years.
Thin-film solar cells manufacturer AQT Solar has received US$18.7 million from investors to double production at its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, US. Details of the investors have not been disclosed.
First Solar will use the Waste Management Phoenix Open, as part of the PGA Tour, in Scotsdale, Arizona, US, to showcase its solar PV arrays to power the event, including the waste management hospitality tent at the 18th hole. The company will have exclusive rights to the event as the only solar energy provider.
SunPower and Salt River Project (SRP) recently announced that they will be developing a 1MW solar PV plant at Arizona State University’s (ASU) Polytechnic campus in Mesa, Arizona. The organizations advised that this will be the first commercial deployment of SunPower’s C7 Tracker technology. SunPower will lead the engineering and construction of the plant while additionally operating and maintaining it upon completion.
Skyline Solar, a manufacturer of solar CPV arrays for the commercial, industrial, government and utility markets, has won a US$1.85 million contract from the US Department of Defense (DoD) and has since broken ground on the construction of Skyline Solar X14 CPV power plants at two domestic military sites. Last summer, Skyline was awarded three new patents in relation to its CPV technology through the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Green Technology Pilot Program.
Sunvalley Solar has scored another commercial solar installation; this time with XL Biofuels in Thermal, California. Late last year, Sunvalley was awarded a US$2 million contract for a project in Long Beach, California, which was followed by two more project contracts for Southern California sites.
