Americas

As the day dawns tomorrow, Arizona Western College (AWC) will be teaming with solar industry professionals, Main Street Power and Arizona Public Service as they break ground at the campus’ 5MW solar project. Owned and operated by Main Street Power, the solar installation will bear a unique marker, as the five-1MW sites across the campus will include CPV panels from SolFocus and GreenVolts, thin-film tandem-junction amorphous-silicon panels from Sharp Solar, monocrystalline panels from Solar World, and polycrystalline panels from Suntech.

Plans are in the works to develop and build a 20MW solar PV power plant on property surrounding the Maryland Correctional Institution outside of Hagerstown. The project would be the largest commercial solar facility in the state.

The US Department of Energy has selected Innovalight for $3.4 million of funding as part of the agency's SunShot initiative. The funds will go toward efforts to accelerate the development and production of the company's silicon ink material and processes for high-efficiency solar cells at its operations in Sunnyvale in Northern California's Silicon Valley.

Chevron Energy Solutions has completed the construction for a 7.1MW of PV installations for the East Side Union High School District in San Jose, CA, a project that's called the largest K-12 solar and energy efficiency program in the US. The program is expected to generate $43 million in savings through a 7.1 MW solar and energy efficiency project on 13 sites.

SolarReserve has secured a US$737 million conditional loan guarantee commitment from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to help build the company's 110MW Crescent Dunes PV project. Building work on the site, located in Tonopah, Nevada, can begin this summer; the penciled-in completion date is late 2013.

Siliken celebrated the ribbon cutting of its new 50MW solar module production facility in Ontario with government and company officials on hand to commemorate the site’s grand opening. This is the second North American manufacturing facility that Siliken has opened, following its San Diego, California, site, which was initiated in 2008.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has signed two more 25-year power purchase agreements (PPA) with Soitec Solar Development, which, this time around, will total 125MW of solar energy produced in SDG&E’s service area. Just last month, the utility signed contracts with Soitec subsidiaries for three solar projects in the San Diego area that amounted to 30MW of solar PV energy. SDG&E stressed that the three previous contracts were separate contracts from those announced today.

Ontario-based Magnum Pv, a sister company of Magnum Integrated Technologies, will be receiving delivery of a 60MW Schmid module line in September. The two companies noted that this would be the first Schmid turnkey module delivered to North America. Upon receipt, Magnum Pv states that its first UL 1703 certified module should roll of the line by mid-October.

The Qwest Field Event Center, home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, is currently undergoing a “green transformation” with the installation of a rooftop solar PV system. Considered the largest rooftop solar array in Washington to date, the Qwest Field installation will have 3,750 CIGS solar panels manufactured by Solyndra producing over 830,000kWh of solar electricity per year and offset 21% of the Event Center’s annual utility costs.

North Las Vegas was filled with state and local officials who joined Amonix and its manufacturing services partner Flextronics at the ribbon cutting ceremony for Amonix’s new 214,000 square foot manufacturing facility. The manufacturing site, which utilizes electricity generated by an Amonix 7700 system, produces Amonix CPV solar power systems and employs over 300 local Nevada citizens in new management, technical and production jobs.