This weekend, Spain will be following in the footsteps of its European cousins, having organised a demonstration against cuts to its solar incentive scheme and energy moratorium. April 22, Earth Day, at noon, Spaniards will march from Santo Domingo Opera Dos de Mayo in the hope their government will take heed of their warning even though similar events in Germany and Italy fell on deaf ears. The UK is currently the only European country to have had any success against curtailing feed-in tariff cuts, no matter how short term the result may be.
Solar collector manufacturer SkyFuel has announced that it now offers insurance on their product warranties. After a year of negotiations, German reinsurer Munich Re has agreed to back SkyFuel’s warranties.
The European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) has announced that Carlos Lee will become its new director general with immediate effect. The announcement, made at the association’s recent annual general meeting, will see Lee replace Thomas Pearsall, who has been with the organization since its formulation in 2003.
Founder and Chairman of the Radiant Group, Winston Xu Biao is the newest member of Ascent Solar Technologies’ board of directors. Xu will help the company oversee new market opportunities, as well as its re-entrance into the BIPV and BAPV markets, which it delayed in March 2011.
Subsequent to the announcement last week of Los Angeles’ approval of a feed-in tariff, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has signed an ordinance authorizing the city’s Department of Water and Power to now establish a pilot program. Approval of the program by the Board of Water and Power Commissioners has been scheduled for April 17.
Despite our reports in March and earlier this month, the Brazilian Secretary of Energy Planning and Development of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Altino Ventura Filho, has announced that solar energy will not form part of auctions in order to augment generation of solar power.
Following the retirement of José Villarreal, a member of the board since 2007, First Solar has taken the opportunity to expand its board membership from nine to 11 members. The company has nominated George “Chip” Hambro, former First Solar COO, and Richard “Rick” Chapman, CFO of Walton Enterprises, Inc., to stand for election at its annual stockholder meeting on May 23, the latter as an independent director.
In the first quarter of 2012, financial investment in clean energy has been the weakest since 2009, states Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The figures published demonstrate investment was down 28% from Q4 2011 to just US$27 billion – 22% lower than the equivalent figure in the first quarter of last year. This includes venture capital, private equity, public markets and asset finance, but excludes small-scale projects and corporate and government RD&D.
RWE is supposedly looking to invest in solar power plants, citing solar module prices as one of its key determining factors. According to Bloomberg, up until now Germany’s second-biggest utility, which owns a stake in Spain’s Andasol 3 solar thermal power plant, has distanced itself from investing in PV generation because of what it considered too high of a cost for the technology. However, now that prices for solar modules are considerably lower than in the past, the utility is taking a second look.
PV inverter manufacturer, Satcon Technology has said that new orders have increased 130% in the first quarter of 2012 compared to previous quarter, reaching a bookings value of approximately US$45 million. The company said the quarter had been the most successful bookings period in four quarters, with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.9:1.
