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.
Schneider Electric is to purchase Xantrex Technology, Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $412 million. Xantrex is a top 3 global player in the solar and wind inverter market and number 1 in the U.S. As a condition to the sale, Xantrex will divest its programmable power business to AMETEK, Inc. for $120 million in cash.
Polysilicon shortages are not only limiting the potential growth of the PV industry but are continuing to impact manufacturing costs, according to Dr. Henning Wicht, Senior Director and Principal Analyst, MEMS and PV for iSuppli. Costs are rising rather than falling, forcing PV manufacturers to establish their own polysilicon production as well as seek cost saving elsewhere.
SunPower Corporation has signed a five-year agreement with Jiawei SolarChina Co., Ltd. (Jiawei) to secure a supply of monocrystalline silicon ingots and silicon wafers, beginning in 2008. The deal is expected to enable SunPower to produce the equivalent of 900MW during the agreement period.
China Sunergy is to supply Canadian Solar with a total volume of 25MWof solar cells for 2008. Under the Agreements, China Sunergy willsupply approximately 12MW and 13MW of solar cells to Canadian Solar inthe first and second half of the year respectively.
