This month will see the completion of ESA Renewables’s 1.3MW commercial rooftop solar project in New Bern, North Carolina, US. ESA claims this will be one of the largest rooftop PV arrays in eastern North Carolina.
juwi solar has signed a contract to sell the electricity produced by its planned 19MW Queen Creek PV system in Arizona to Salt River Project (SRP). The 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) will begin once the installation is grid connected at the end of 2012.
Arizona Public Service’s (APS) Cotton Center solar plant has officially come online in Gila Bend, Arizona. The 17MW facility was developed and constructed by Solon and brings APS’ total renewable portfolio to 930MW. Constructed on 145 acres, and using over 93,000 single-axis tracking PV panels that were placed in 1,662 rows, the project is expected to fulfill the energy needs of over 4,000 APS customers.
Effective January 1, 2012, Robert Yorgensen will be STR Holdings’ new CEO and president. Dennis Jilot, who has served as the company’s CEO since 1997 will be retiring from the positions, but intends to remain as chairman of the board of directors.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have issued Rockford Solar Partners, a joint venture between Wanxiang American and New Generation Power, the FONSI, “Finding of No Significant Impact” for the proposed 20MW solar farm at the Rockford Airport. The project will be able to utilize 70 acres of land at the Chicago-Rockford International Airport for what is being called the largest commercial airport-based solar project in the US.
Enecsys announced that it has established a partnership with SMTC, a global electronics manufacturing service provider, which will see the company manufacture its micro inverters for the Canadian market at SMTC’s Markham facility in the York region of Ontario. This partnership will allow for Enecsys to meet and partake in the Ontario Power Authority’s FiT domestic content requirement for renewable energy projects.
Chevron Energy Solutions has completed the installation of a 1.15MW PV system at Dinuba’s wastewater treatment plant. The ground-mounted array, which sits atop a capped landfill adjacent to the plant, is made up of 4,704 modules and is expected to help cut the city’s electrical utility consumption by 70%.
Targray Technology International was selected by Giga Solar Materials as the global distributor for its back surface aluminum paste. The long-term agreement will see Targray distributed the solar cell aluminum paste throughout Europe, North America and India for mono- and multicrystalline silicon solar cells. The paste is said to be designed to for high efficiency, low-bowing, high material compatibility.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s high-desert Adelanto Switching and Converter Station has started to take shape. Located on a 42-acre site, about 65 miles north of Los Angeles, construction on the project began in February this year, after the Board of Water and Power Commissioners granted final approval for the project in December 2010.
Semiconductor equipment supplier, Novellus Systems is developing what it describes as conformal film deposition (CFD) technology, an atomic layer deposition process to grow conformal metal oxide and metal nitride dipole layers in the PV cells. Collaboration is being undertaken with the University of South Florida (USF), to study the precise engineering of solar cell interfaces via a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.
