SunPower has signed a strategic supply agreement with Toshiba, in which the Japanese company will order 32MW of high-efficiency monocrystalline-silicon solar panels from the PV firm this year. The SunPower modules will form the cornerstone of Toshiba's new residential solar offering in Japan, to be launched April 1.
Citing its strong brand awareness, European sales network, and high-quality solar modules, aleo solar has reported sales of €376.1 million in 2009, up slightly from €360.5 million posted in 2008. EBIT was €16.0 million (€23.8 million in 2008), while EBIT margin was 4.3% (6.6 percent in 2008).
Suntech received the 2009 FT ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business Environment Award on February 25 at the annual Boldness in Business awards, held in London.
Mitsubishi Electric has said that it has completed construction of PV Cell Plant #2, a 50MW solar cell production facility at its Nakatsugawa Works Iida Factory in Nagano Prefecture. When ramped in 2011, the new plant will give Mitsubishi an annual capacity of 270MW. The company noted that the new facility will also produce monocrystalline-silicon cells and start production by March 2011.
LDK Solar has entered into an agreement to acquire the crystalline module manufacturing plant of Best Solar. The transaction will be based on a cash consideration of US$21.5 million, representing the value of the assets acquired determined on a neutral basis.
What has been Showa Shell Solar will soon be sporting a new name—Solar Frontier. The Japanese thin-film photovoltaics company will be making the brand change on April 1 as part of a plan to expand its global network and eventually hit a target of 1GW of sales per year of its copper-indium-selenide (CIS) modules to customers worldwide. The rebranded company will open offices in Northern California and Munich. A third factory, which will join the two existing production facilities in Japan with a nominal capacity of 100MW, will begin operations in Miyazaki in 2011. The price tag for the new 900MW fab has been reported to be around $1 billion.
Following-on from securing Advanced Green Technologies as a distributor of its rooftop CIGS technology, Solyndra has now tapped another Uni-Solar distributor in the name of California-based firm DC Power Systems. As with the AGT deal, no commercial details were provided by Solyndra.
Since the release of the feed-in tariff rates for the UK, Sharp Energy Solutions Europe has announced that it plans to significantly expand its resources in the region as the company expects a large amount of PV uptake within the next couple of years.
2BG and Rise Technology, the company founded by researchers of the La Sapienza University in Rome, have agreed to a collaborative move on the development of solar cell technologies. The partners will research the production of crystalline silicon cells less than 100μm thick.
Deutsche Solar has chosen Eyelit's manufacturing execution software suite to support its photovoltaic wafer production ramp at its new 500MW facility in Freiburg, Germany. Eyelit and its partner, Systema, were selected to provide a scalable MES solution for the management of factory assets and production, along with material traceability and visibility from raw silicon through wafer processing, including ingot and brick production areas.
