PV and electronics equipment manufacturing and automation specialist Manz AG has reported first quarter 2018 revenue that was 80.8% higher than the prior year period, and a new first quarter revenue record for the company.
Major China-based PV module manufacturer Risen Energy, which entered PV Tech’s Top 10 module manufacturer’s rankings for the first time in 2017, has said that it expects to ship at least 800MW of PV modules outside China in 2017.
Major PV inverter manufacturer SMA Solar Technology has announced that it has reclaimed the leadership position in the US commercial market segment, accounting for over 26% of market share, according to GTM Research’s most recent ‘US PV Leaderboard’ report.
Specialist semiconductor and PV equipment supplier Intevac reiterated that its 12 unit ‘ENERGi’ solar ion implant tool order valued at around US$23 million that was booked in March, 2017 remained in its order backlog at the end of the first quarter of 2018.
China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has called on local governments to ease burdens on the renewable energy sector with a range of measures including the “strict implementation”of a guarantee for signing power purchase agreements (PPAs).
Specialist PV manufacturing equipment supplier Singulus Technologies has booked over €40 million (US$48.5 million) in new CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide) thin-film manufacturing equipment orders in 2018.
Polysilicon producer REC Silicon said it had achieved 800MT of FBR (Fluidized Bed Reactor) granular polysilicon production at its Joint Venture (JV) plant in Yulin, China in the first quarter of 2018.
Sineng Electric has introduced a new central distributed inverter for bifacial solar modules. Bifacial modules are expected to become a leading force in the industry due to the significant improvement in energy yields and reduction in cost but their high-performance characteristics are not served well with current inverter technologies.
China installed a total of 9.65GW of solar PV capacity in the first quarter of 2018, a 22% increase over the prior year period, according to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA).
Leading PV manufacturing equipment supplier Meyer Burger said it would appeal an initial judgment made in a Chinese court that dismissed its patent infringement lawsuit against Wuxi Shangji Automation Co over its Diamond Wire Management System (DWMS).