SunPower’s latest endeavours in California includes partnering with Orchard Supply Hardware, a chain of 89 hardware and garden retail stores located throughout the state, in order to reach a wider audience through information displays and at www.OSH.com.
With help from REC Solar and Gehrlicher Solar, IKEA will be installing approximately 10,000 solar panels across the rooftops of its Draper, Utah, New Haven Connecticut and Portland, Oregon stores. The three new installations will generate 3,156MWh of electricity per year and bring IKEA’s solar program to 23 store installations in the US.
In the fourth consecutive Schott Solar Barometer survey, conducted by Kelton Research on behalf of Schott Solar, US-based respondents expressed a significant support for the use and development of solar energy and federal investments for solar. According to Kelton, nine out of 10 Americans, or 89%, responded that they felt it was important for the US to develop and use solar energy. Breaking the results down by political party, 80% of Republicans, 90% of Independents and 94% of Democrats, agreed for furthering solar in the US.
The T-Solar Group, which has 230MW of solar projects under construction in Spain, Italy, India and Peru, advised that it is continuing its international development with the addition of 61MW of solar power in Peru and India. The company recently brought its 5MW PV power plant in India online, which uses thin-film amorphous silicon panels that were fabricated at its Galicia, Spain factory.
BioSolar advised that its BioBacksheet has been granted provisional relative thermal index (RTI) recognition by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). The company first received UL materials certification for its technology in February and since that time has seen the UL conduct long-term thermal stability testing on the BioBacksheet.
Solon will be building a 10MW solar PV plant near Kingman, Arizona for UniSource Energy Services (UES), which, under a 20-year PPA, will allow the utility to provide renewable power to its customers without the upfront cost of the system installation. The 10MW array will accompany the 1.22MW UES-owned solar array that Solon developed near Kingman’s La Senita Elementary School.
Earlier this year, Veeco announced its impending exit from the CIGS thin-film PV business and with its announcement advised of its intentions to transfer its R&D facility and pilot line in New York to the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the University of Albany. Three months after the initial declaration, Dr. Alain Kaloyeros, Senior VP and CEO of CNSE, and Congressman Chris Gibson, came together to formally launch CNSE’s new Solar Energy Development Center in Halfmoon, New York, which has taken over the facility once occupied by Veeco.
Sequel Power, a division of Tegal, has opened offices in South America for the development of large-scale solar utility projects in the region. The offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile will serve the company’s customers and partners in South America and are overseen by Price Alexander von Sachsen, Sequel’s chairman of South America, the Middle East and Africa. The company currently has large-scale PV solar utilities projects underway in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador.
JinkoSolar Holding has provided a calm and unruffled response to the SolarWorld/CASM petition news, stating that the company intends to carry on its manufacturing practices as normal while the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US Department of Commerce (DOC) decide how to respond to the allegations of unfair trading practices on the part of Chinese cell and module manufacturers.
SunPower and California’s San Ramon Valley Unified School District celebrated the 3.3MW of solar projects installed across five school sites for the San Ramon school district. It is estimated that the five projects will produce over two-thirds of school’s energy needs over the system’s lifetime. California High School, Dougherty Valley High School, Monte Vista High School, San Ramon Valley High School and Diablo Vista Middle School all saw the solar installations completed earlier this month.
