MAG Industrial Automation Systems will be starting a new renewable energy business unit, which is intended to design and build automated manufacturing systems for solar panels and wind turbine components. The new unit will be based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and Hebron, Kentucky, led by Dr. Siegfried Schmalzried and Joe Jones respectively.
Advanced Energy has completed its purchase of PV Powered, enabling the company to service commercial utility installations between 30kW and 1MW and the residential sector for 5kW or smaller inverters.
CNPV Solar Power has become the latest solar photovoltaic manufacturer to become a member of PV Cycle. The company joins the environmental recycling program on its mission to introduce the take back and recycling of end-of-life PV modules.
Spire has been awarded a U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) contract, which means the company is now listed as a small business entity on GSA's Schedule 56, under special identification number (SIN) 206-3.
Hawaii Energy Connection (HEC) has now completed its 300th solar electric installation using Enphase Microinverters. HEC is currently responsible for approximately 50% of all residential photovoltaic installations in Hawaii over the past two years.
Screen printing processes are a key battle ground for both equipment suppliers and solar cell producers as greater emphasis is placed on improving cell efficiencies. Applied Materials has claimed that its ‘Esatto Technology’ is expected to reach a new milestone with more than 2GW of annual cell manufacturing capacity in the next few months. Applied said that its customers in China, Taiwan and Europe have demonstrated 0.46% absolute cell efficiency gains with its technology, and up to a 14% reduction in consumption of silver printing paste.
Von Roll has announced that it will now perform all solar activities in the Solar Centre of Excellence headquartered in Tägerwilen in the canton of Thurgau, Switzerland. The Centre will combine the production of Von Roll ssolar cells and other company research and development projects.
BTU International has released its financial results for the first quarter of 2010, ended April 4. First quarter net sales were US$17.2 million, up 42.5% compared with US$12.1 million in the preceding quarter, and up 75.3% compared to US$9.8 million for the same quarter in 2009.
Phoenix Solar has won tenders for two new solar power plants using First Solar’s CdTe thin-film modules from SWT Stadtwerke Trier, the city utility for Trier, Germany. The first project in Bitburg will start construction this week and employ 72,000 modules for an installed capacity of 5.6MW. The second project will use 28,000 First Solar modules, generating a peak power of around 2.2MW, will be assembled in Fell. Phoenix Solar has now worked on 11 such projects in the region.
In the grand scheme of things data released by UK utility, npower may seem rather insignificant but is actually a major boost to the realization that photovoltaics in the UK is taking off and that demand is far exceeding expectations just a month after the UK government introduced the first feed-in tariff that parallels other good systems in place in Germany, Italy and France. Confirmed figures given to PV-Tech from the utility meann that a total of 55 PV systems were installed by its installation partner Ecofirst Ltd, since the beginning of April, 2010 when the tariff was introduced.
