The European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) has announced that Carlos Lee will become its new director general with immediate effect. The announcement, made at the association’s recent annual general meeting, will see Lee replace Thomas Pearsall, who has been with the organization since its formulation in 2003.
Heliotrop’s HCPV1024 consortium was recently awarded €16 million by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME), which will support a total investment program of €44 million to build manufacturing facilities and install Heliotrop CPV modules.
Canadian Solar has established a new reseller program for its products in the EMEA region. The Authorized Reseller Program will allow companies registered with Canadian Solar to offer the company’s solar product range in the region, and will also enable them to avail of further features such as technical product training and professional sales and marketing support.
RWE is supposedly looking to invest in solar power plants, citing solar module prices as one of its key determining factors. According to Bloomberg, up until now Germany’s second-biggest utility, which owns a stake in Spain’s Andasol 3 solar thermal power plant, has distanced itself from investing in PV generation because of what it considered too high of a cost for the technology. However, now that prices for solar modules are considerably lower than in the past, the utility is taking a second look.
Isofoton advised that it has signed a joint development agreement with Korea’s Posco Plant Engineering for the international development of solar projects. The EPC company and solar module company noted that the projects will mainly be focused in the US, a locale in which Isofoton plans to install a 100MW solar plant later this year. Isofoton acknowledged that this partnership was a way to help broaden its international presence.
Specialist PV system monitoring firm, Solare Datensysteme said that sales had reached almost €7 million in the first quarter of 2012, a 118% increase over the same quarter in 2011. The company guided sales in the second quarter of 2012 would be inline with the first quarter. The increase in sales was said to be due to sales success in a wider number of countries, including Canada and the US.
In a joint venture, NYSE Euronext and research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) have developed three new sector indices covering solar and wind energy as well as energy smart technologies (EST). Each index is produced using the different global stock market values of 70–200 industry companies, and a minimum threshold exposure to applicable renewable energy sectors is also calculated.
Bidding for the real estate, patents and facility inventory of failed Dutch thin-film PV cell manufacturer Nuon Helianthos BV, will begin on April 16. The company announced that the pilot plant, located in Arnhem, would be closed last year after failing to reach commercial production due to lack of investment.
A subsidiary of MX Group, Solarday has gone into liquidation, according to a brief statement on its website. The company had opened it module assembly plant in Mezzago, Brianza, Italy in 2006 and had employed over 100 people, claiming it had achieved turnover in 2009 of over €60 million. MX Group had acquired a majority ownership of Solarday in 2011.
