With the tectonic plates shifting in the global solar market, Felicity Carus tracks some of the trends that will emerge as the industry comes out of its period of consolidation.
PV-Tech's publisher Solar Media has recently produced the 2013 Production Annual, which brings together the best of our Photovoltaics International articles from the last year. Jef Poortmans, director of PV technologies at IMEC, offers his thoughts on what insights the annual offers into the state of PV technology.
Futurist and Google collaborator Ray Kurzweil has predicted a world entirely powered by solar. Having heard him speak earlier this month, Felicity Carus wonders whether he could be right.
Huntsman Advanced Materials has launched a new product for potting of solar inverters. The polyurethane system ‘Arathane’ CW 5660 / HY 5610 has been designed to meet the key requirements of inverters for PV applications. Fast processing, high thermal endurance combined with low temperature flexibility and high thermal conductivity are the key features of the new system.
First Solar has launched a new evolution of its Series 3 CdTe thin-film PV module platform. The ‘Series 3 Black’ is said to incorporate First Solar's latest advances in conversion efficiency as well as additional features to enhance its performance in utility-scale power plants.
The California Solar Initiative has been a runaway success, driving over 1.5GW of installations, but its days are now numbered. In the search for ways to keep the momentum going, community solar is emerging as a hot contender says Felicity Carus.
The IMO Solar Cube has been developed by IMO Precision Controls as an easy to set up solar tracking and measurement controller with the flexibility to adapt to either one or two axis PV module installations to track the sun’s movement.
Normally a sleeping aid for insomniacs, SEC filings can sometimes contain interesting insights into publicly traded companies. Tom Cheyney has dug a few out from Trina Solar's latest filing.
PSE AG has developed a new test stand, Degratest Labtool, designed for the testing of the light-induced degradation (LID) effect on silicon solar cells. The testing technology monitors and records degradation effects, and offers manufacturers and research institutions a fast and reliable tool for testing and developing solar cells. The LID test system was developed at ISC Konstance.
SURAGUS GmbH, a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Non-Destructive Testing Dresden, offers the ‘EddyCus Thin-Film lab’ specifically for contactless real-time thickness and sheet resistance determination of low and high conductive thin-films on glass, wafer, plastics or foils.
