Mark Osborne

Major PVEP (PV energy provider), SunPower Corp said that it reduced production costs by more than 20% in 2013, following-on from a greater than 20% reduction achieved in the previous year.

PV energy provider (PVEP), Canadian Solar is considering increasing production capacity to 3GW in 2014. The SEC filing also revealed that the company had increased module assembly capacity at its plant in Ontario, Canada from 330MW at the end of 2013 to 530MW of as of January 31, 2014.

Polysilicon demand is increasing sharply on the back of expected global end market demand reaching 49GW in 2014, according to NPD Solarbuzz.

New EU WEEE regulations coming into force will be met in France by a consortium of PV manufacturers and industry body, PV CYCLE.

SunEdison has said the polysilicon ingot production operations for its semiconductor customers would be consolidated with the full closure of its facilities in Merano, Italy, and the transfer of 200mm diameter ingot production from St. Peters, Missouri to other overseas facilities.

India-based PV manufacturer, Vikram Solar is considering a technology collaboration with Finish firm Cencorp in respect to its Metal Wrap Through (MWT) solar cell and Conductive Back Sheet (CBS) based PV module technology.

Advanced Energy Industries (AE) has said it has begun shipping its new flagship ‘AE 1000NX’ 1MW-sized according to its backlog pipeline to PV projects.

PV equipment and technology specialist, Amtech Systems reported a noticeable rebound in sales for its fiscal first quarter of 2014.

US-based start-up, Siva Power formerly Solexant, has reported a CIGS cell efficiency of 18.8% that it claims was verified by NREL in December 2013.

Panasonic reported that it’s Eco Solutions segment that includes its PV module operations increased sales to around US$4.6 billion in the FY2014 third quarter, up around 10% from the same period a year ago.