Emmvee, DelSolar and Jurawatt are the latest companies to announce their solar modules will be stamped “Made in Europe” and eligible for a 10% premium over normal Italian feed-in tariff rates.
PV systems integrator, Phoenix Solar is using First Solar’s CdTe thin film modules on a 1.7MW project in Italy for an independent power producer, while a 1MW plant near Rome will use CIGS thin film modules from MiaSolé. The project is for an unidentified Italian investor, according to Phoenix Solar.
In 2010, pvXchange traded nearly 185MW of solar modules and 85MW of inverters working with over 300 suppliers and 2,500 active buyers for the European market. The company is now looking to make headway in the North American market with the opening of its new US headquarters in San Francisco, which is supplemented with pvXchange’s presence in New Jersey and Ontario, Canada as well.
SolOptics, a division of Genie Lens Technologies, revealed a significant milestone in the performance testing of its Fusion PV enhancement technology. Testing conducted at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has concluded that the Fusion technology increased the overall energy production of the PV modules tested by up to 4%, with performance enhancements for all irradiance ranges.
As Governor Osuna of Baja California toured CPV company Arima Operations in Taipei, Arima and Baja Sun Energy advised of their plan to form Mexico’s first integrated solar business. The new company will build a CPV solar system manufacturing plant and use the panels manufactured by the plant to install a utility-sized solar generation facility at the Silicon Border CleanTECH Park in Mexicali, Mexico.
SpectraWatt willo auction off its 140,000 square-foot crystalline silicon cell manufacturing and research facility in Hudson Valley at the end of the month. In August the cell manufacturer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the bulk and piecemeal auction, to be carried out by Heritage Global Partners, Counsel RB Capital and Silicon Valley Disposition, marks the first stage of financial restructuring.
The European association implementing a voluntary, industrywide program to recycle expired solar modules, PV Cycle, elected as president Sanyo adviser Wilfried Taetow at a special meeting last week in Hamburg during EU PVSEC.
Yingli Solar, the American subsidiary of China-based Yingli Green Energy, will sponsor free solar modules for fifty low-income families on the United States west coast, in collaboration with non-profit solar installer GRID Alternatives.
DEGERenergie has won a contract to supply two new solar parks in Italy with its DEGERtrakers 6000NT. Installation of the two systems, located in the province of Enna in Sicily and with a combined capacity of 2MW, is already underway and when completed they will be equipped with 7.35 kWp modules and a total of 270 trackers. Etna Energia is managing the new systems.
Two weeks after Conergy was busy putting out fires surrounding the rumors that it was planning to close its manufacturing plant in Frankfurt, the company has advised that it will be halting production of its wafer and cell manufacturing lines at the German facility. The company advised that its PV module production at the Oder plant would continue, but that the over-capacity, price pressures and the inability to cover the costs of wafer and cell manufacturing had forced it to discontinue the productions for the time being.
