Intel Corporation has spun off solar cell technology developed in-house under its New Business Initiatives group that is designed to stimulate new businesses from Intel employees. The start-up is called SpectraWatt, with the lead investor being Intel Capital. Other investors in the $50 million round include Goldman Sachs, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund (“CETF”) and German module manufacturer Solon AG, presumably an expected customer of SpectraWatt. How much Intel or the other partners actually invested was not made clear.
An Italian start-up, Estelux, has given a contract to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., to oversee the construction of it first polysilicon production facility to be built on an existing petrochemical site in Ferrara, Italy. SOLON Group was said to be an owner of shares in Estelux. The plant is expected to cost approximately €360 million and produce 4,000 tins of polysilion per year with full capacity expected to be reached in 2010.
A new thin-film amorphous photovoltaic manufacturing company has been formed under the Masdar Initiative, Abu Dhabi's renewable energy program, dubbed Masdar PV. The new company will initially invest $600 million in two separate SunFab turnkey 5.7 m2 module production lines supplied by Applied Materials in Erfurt, Germany and in Abu Dhabi. Total investment has been put as $2 billion with an expected capacity in excess of 1GW of annual production by 2014. The combined initial production capacity of the two sites was said to be 210 megawatts, with the capacity already committed to PV system installers in Europe and projects for Masdar itself.
Q-Cells has announced its intentions to develop a major thin film photovoltaics manufacturing facility at the Silicon Border industrial park near Mexicali, Mexico at a projected cost of $3.5 billion. The development is dependent on the future growth of the PV market in the US, Mexico and Latin America and is a mid to long-term plan according to Q-Cells.
The EPIA will host the first International Conference on Thin Films in the Solar Photovoltaic sector in November 2008 in Munich, Germany. The event is being held due to the significant ramp in thin-film technologies that is expected through 2010, which could see the technology represent 20 percent of the overall PV module production capacity.
Suntech Power has reiterated its plans to achieve a name plate production capacity of 1GW in solar cells by the end of 2008. Suntech also expects total PV module shipments to reach 530MW and revenues in the range of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion for 2008. The company plans to spend between $200 million and $300 million on capital equipment this year to add between 20 and 30 plus production lines with a nominal capacity of 30MW per annum to enable it to reach its 1GW capacity target.
XsunX has signed an agreement with Praxair for the supply of bulk industrial gases for its new multi-megawatt thin film photovoltaic (TFPV) solar manufacturing facility near Portland, Oregon.
In an effort to provide greater transparency to the photovoltaics manufacturing industry, PHOTON Consulting has launched a paid subscription-based service, tracking high-purity silicon prices, both spot and contract, dubbed the PHOTON Consulting Silicon Price Index (PCSPI).
SunPower plans to be the first silicon wafer-based photovoltaic producer to build and ramp a single 1GW facility with the announcement that it will start construction of Fab 3 in Malaysia later in 2008. The two-phase capacity expansion will see the first phase come on-stream in 2010 with 14 solar cell production lines with a nameplate capacity of 40 megawatts each. Phase two will see Fab 3 top 1GW in annual capacity, according to SunPower.
As part of wider plan to leverage advanced research at IBM to significantly reduce the cost-per-watt of solar photovoltaics from silicon cells, thin-film and concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), IBM scientists are developing a more powerful CPV technology that they claim could lead to a significant breakthrough for utility-scale applications.
