Despite boardroom spats, technology deviation, and financial concerns, Solar Millennium said that Hannes Kuhn has resigned from company's supervisory board with immediate effect.
Isolux Corsán’s first venture into the UK solar market has been successfully completed with the commenced operation of three, 5MW power plants in Langform, Churchtown and Manor in Cornwall. The €40 million project is said to be the largest, combined, in the UK holding a 15MW-installed capacity.
SolarEdge Technologies and Italian distributor Tecno Spot have announced a partnership that will see SolarEdge’s solar power harvesting solutions offered and delivered throughout Italy. Under the signed deal SolarEdge’s module-integrated power optimizers, solar invertors and monitoring tool will be distributed by Tecno Spot with the deal aiming to allow installers and system owners a better solar system design and ultimately a faster return on investment.
PV systems integrator, Phoenix Solar is using First Solar’s CdTe thin film modules on a 1.7MW project in Italy for an independent power producer, while a 1MW plant near Rome will use CIGS thin film modules from MiaSolé. The project is for an unidentified Italian investor, according to Phoenix Solar.
DEGERenergie has won a contract to supply two new solar parks in Italy with its DEGERtrakers 6000NT. Installation of the two systems, located in the province of Enna in Sicily and with a combined capacity of 2MW, is already underway and when completed they will be equipped with 7.35 kWp modules and a total of 270 trackers. Etna Energia is managing the new systems.
Two weeks after Conergy was busy putting out fires surrounding the rumors that it was planning to close its manufacturing plant in Frankfurt, the company has advised that it will be halting production of its wafer and cell manufacturing lines at the German facility. The company advised that its PV module production at the Oder plant would continue, but that the over-capacity, price pressures and the inability to cover the costs of wafer and cell manufacturing had forced it to discontinue the productions for the time being.
The German government could impose harsher-than-expected cuts to solar energy subsidies next year due to a rise in solar panel installations, according to a Reuters report. In June and July, around 1.25GW of PV capacity was installed in Germany, a figure higher than the figure achieved in the preceding five months of the year combined, and while Germany's network regulator declined to comment on these reported figures, government sources have indicated this will prompt a 15% cut to incentives in January.
This summer solar developer Espe Sunparc has completed the installation of a 10MW PV project portfolio in Italy. All 10 projects were installed between July and August and are located across fove regions. The portfolio is expected to generate 14 million kWh of electricity per annum.
Belgian research centre imec has announced the development of its new organic PV cell. Developed in conjunction with Pennsylvanian technology company Plextronics and Belgian chemical company Solvay, the polymer-based single junction cell achieves an efficiency of up to 6.9%. A module using the same polymer achieved an efficiency of 5% across an area of 25cm2.
Fraunhofer ISE is showcasing future cost reductions and higher cell efficiencies using industrially feasible galvanic processes, primarily copper at the 26th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition from 5-9 September in Hamburg (Hall A4, Stand C11). ISE has demonstrated 21.4 % efficiency cells (2x2 cm²) with long-term-stable copper metallization and is now working on migrating the results to industry standard wafer sizes.
