Silicon Valley-based SunPower Corp. has named Jorg Heinemann as its new Chief Information Officer. Mr. Heinemann joins the company from his former 20-year tenure at Accenture, where he most recently held the role of Executive Partner. As Chief Information Officer, he will steer SunPower’s global IT organization and manage the company's strategic technology planning.
Amelio Solar, Inc. has named Donald Osborn as its President and as Director of its photovoltaic power generation systems group. Based in Ewing, New Jersey, Amelio Solar intends to apply Mr. Osborn’s over 30 years of experience in the industry the company’s expansion plans, with the installation of a large-scale thin-film PV module factory in California planned for 2009. Mr. Osborn will also assume responsibility for development of the company's global turnkey thin-film PV module factory deployment business and expansion of its power generation systems portfolio.
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has named his selection to head the American Energy Department. Steven Chu, former co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1997), Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and founder of the Helios Solar Energy Research Center (SERC), has accepted the post that will see Dr. Chu instrumental in the allocation of Obama’s planned $150 billion investment in alternative energy technologies. Dr. Chu will work alongside Carol Browner, who will head the national energy council and led the Environmental Protection Agency under Bill Clinton.
According to a Forbes report, major investment banks Goldman Sachs and CDH Investment have together contributed close to US$100 million in Himin Solar Energy Group, a solar module manufacturer based in eastern China's Shandong province. The investment, which was announced earlier in the year but delayed because of the global economic crisis, has been earmarked for aiding in company growth and R&D.
The APOLLON project, a Europe-wide cooperation of PV research institutions, has accepted SolarTec AG’s application to become an industrial partner. In this role, SolarTec will develop a new concentrator system for the project, which is based on the fields of ‘PF’ (Point Focus) and ‘High Density-Mirror Based Spectra Splitting.’ SolarTec was chosen for participation from an applicant base of more than 400, including renowned research institutes.
Complementing the company’s installation of a turnkey PV module manufacturing line, Spire Corp. has been commissioned to supply US$54.9 million of solar cells to the Federal Prison Industries, Inc., also known as UNICOR, at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Otisville, New York. The aim is for the FCI Otisville inmates to be trained to use the module line, thereby preparing them for employment in the growing solar industry, while the modules manufactured at the plant will be used in government installations.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland recently, major players in the solar industry gathered to meet with representatives from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to discuss the role of solar energy in the ongoing fight against climate change. Suntech’s Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Solarcentury’s Jeremy Leggett and Mike Ahearn of First Solar met with UNEP’s Executive Director Achim Steiner to propose the speeding up of policies implementation to encourage uptake of solar energy as a major player in greenhouse gas reduction.
San Diego-based Green Star Alternative Energy, Inc. has revealed that its recently acquired subsidiary Notos Solar d.o.o. has signed a letter of intent for the purchase of a 5MW turnkey thin-film PV manufacturing facility from Nanergy Hungary. With this move, Notos Solar d.o.o. is opening up the Serbian solar market as it has also secured the exclusive rights of the technology for use exclusively for the Republic of Serbia and Macedonia.
Plans for a 1GW PV power plant are underway in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where the Al-Husseini Group, a diversified real estate, industrial and trading organization based in Amman, Jordan, and Amelio Solar plan to construct a 200MW thin-film PV module manufacturing plant over the space of three years, which will power the gigawatt-scale plant. The Jordan-based gigawatt plant, referred to as a “multi-year” project, will be designed by Amelio Solar and is expected to be completed by 2017.
Evolution Solar looks set to add another customer to its books, as Atlantic Energy Solutions has decided to team up with the company for provision of its PV panels. The collaboration will pave the way for the certification of the panels by Underwriters Laboratories, and will see the modules used in Atlantic Energy’s solar projects in the U.S. It will also allow for the provision on Atlantic Energy’s part of low-cost panels at high volumes for large projects.
