Before 2015, no solar PV cell manufacturer had ever produced more than 3GW of cells in a single calendar year. In fact, very few had exceeded the 2GW level. This year, three companies are poised to manufacture more than 3GW each, with almost 10GW collectively. Not surprisingly, these three c-Si cell manufacturers will occupy the top-3 solar cell production rankings come the end of the year.
Solar has an opportunity to be a focal point of December's crucial climate talks in Paris, but the industry must become better at making itself heard, writes Ben Willis.
PV Tech visited Europe’s largest solar park, a 300MW project developed by France-based PV developer Neoen, located in Cestas, France in order to take a closer look at the intricacies of such a massive project:
SunPower is planning gigawatts of PV projects over the coming years, but has yet to make public its plans for a new wave of manufacturing capacity expansions. Mark Osborne explores what options may be open to the US company in the race to remain competitive.
Despite Reuters and whole bunch of mainstream media as well as some specialists in the renewable’s field having initially pronounced a major US$4 billion JV between SunEdison and India’s large conglomerate, Adani Group was a done deal back at the beginning of the year, those that did so should re-acquaint themselves with the terms 'memorandum of understanding' (MOU) and 'feasibility study'.
PV Tech’s preliminary analysis of global PV manufacturing expansion plans for the month of July, 2015 provide a longer-term picture to future expansions rather than more immediate decisions, underlying a lull in ‘meaningful’ capacity additions.
Recent reports of tigthening supply and falling polysilicon prices indicate that PV module manufacturers could be entering a period of improved profitability not seen for the last three years, writes Mark Osborne.
