After a slow start, this year’s PV Industry Forum, the traditional opening conference of Intersolar Week in Munich, finally got going during the last session of the day with a resounding call to action from none other than Q-Cells’ boss, Anton Milner. The conference opened with the usual slides and the usual suspects giving their views of the overall solar market. The obligatory emerging market was given lip service--this time it was India--while the rest of the presentations mostly failed to engage the audience in a meaningful way. Things changed during the afternoon....
Recent rumours of a business tie-up between Q-Cells and LDK Solar have come to fruition with the official formation of a Joint Venture (JV) to promote and supply PV systems for large-scale solar power plants in both Europe and China. The new business partners said that a 40MW project located in Europe had already been secured, which will see the use of solar wafers from LDK Solar and solar cells from Q-Cells, though no details were given in respect to modules.
Canadian Solar executives said during a conference call to discuss 4Q and year-end financial results that polysilicon prices had fallen to between US$110 per kg and US$130 per kg. This had enabled the module manufacturer to renegotiate UMG silicon feedstock prices to approximately US$60 per kg, maintaining a US$50 per kg margin between the two feedstocks. Canadian Solar uses UMG silicon in its ‘e-modules’ and has already secured contracts for these lower (15%) priced modules in 2009, equating to 120MW.
The PV Group’s recent PV Fab Managers’ Forum in Dresden, Germany, was a successful event that saw attendance by over 200 leaders and technology experts in the PV industry. The overriding message was that the goal of grid parity would be greatly helped along by the implementation of standards – an ITRS of sorts for the PV industry.
This year’s PV Fab Managers’ Forum, taking place in Dresden, Germany on March 8th and 9th, looks set to be an event to remember. SEMI’S PV Group, organizers of the Forum, have appointed as hosts eight fab managers from solar cell manufacturing companies. The representatives will be shouldered with the task of working actively with the PV Group to improve the customer-supplier relation in the photovoltaic industry.
The PV industry has had another explosive growth year in 2008. As is often the case, news in only the last few months of the year have painted the perception that things are turning for the worse as the credit crunch manifested in the U.S. turns into a global economic recession, impacting the growth in the PV sector along the way. When reviewing the top news stories within the ‘Market Watch’ section, it was pleasing to see that there was a balanced mix between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news that generated the most traffic.
Hoku Materials said it has signed a supply agreement for hydrochloric acid with BHS Acquisitions. The deal is Hoku's second trichlorosilane primary materials agreement in a week, following the announcement of its metallurgical-grade silicon contract with Polymet.
Canadian Solar said it has completed and commissioned Phase I of its ingot and wafer plant on schedule. The new production capacity gives the company an annualized ingot and wafer capacity of 60 MW. CSI has also reiterated its 2009 guidance figures.
Product Briefing Outline: The ‘Eyelit Manufacturing’ solution delivers a full featured, technically advanced manufacturing execution system (MES), asset management, product costing, plant-level connectivity hub, and broad spectrum of other essential functionality. By giving clear insight into production process efficiency, performance/equipment efficiency, inventory control and resource management along with the ability to automatically react to conditions in any factory system, Eyelit Manufacturing suite enables customers to coordinate, control, and respond to changing demands in production.
At the recently held Global PV Demand Conference, hosted by SolarPlaza, attendees raised concern over the potential overcapacity in the photovoltaics industry having a significant impact, starting in 2009.
