San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has signed contracts with subsidiaries of Soitec Solar Development to build three solar projects in San Diego County with a combined capacity of 30MW. All three systems will use Soitec Concentrix technology and are currently awaiting approval from the California Public Utilities Commission.
In future weeks, SunPower will almost certainly be marking April 12 as not only an eventful day, but a successful one as well. Not only did the company celebrate the opening of its Milpitas module manufacturing plant, but also announced that the US Department of Energy (DOE) has offered the company a conditional loan guarantee for its California Valley Solar Ranch power plant.
Clean Energy Pathways and Green Mountain Properties have signed a joint venture agreement that will see the companies collaborate on a 4MW, US$28 million, solar PV plant in Green Mountain, North Carolina. Green Mountain will supply the 40 acres of land where the facility will be built, while Clean Energy acts as lead developer.
Wacker Chemie's long-planned construction of a 15,000MT per annum polysilicon plant in Cleveland, Tennessee, has officially broken ground. The project is said to cost around US$1.5 billion and will create some 650 new jobs when the plant become operational in late 2013. With other planned capacity expansions in Germany, Wacker reiterated that it expects to reach an annual polysilicon capacity of 67,000MT in 2014.
United Solar and Advanced Green Technologies (AGT) have finished work on a new 807kW system spanning six school rooftops in New York’s South Country School District. Each school will generate around 158,000 kWh of electricity per annum and save over US$25,000 in the process.
Standard Solar is calling its new 753kW carport PV system at Maryland’s Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) the largest PV system of its kind in Maryland and one of the biggest PV carport systems on the East Coast. Using a Protek Park PV canopy system, the solar installation will be built on top of the community college’s parking structure. Suniva will provide over 3,100 solar panels for the project, which is anticipated to generate around one million kilowatt hours of electricity in its first operational year.
BlueChip Energy (BCE), a fully-integrated solar energy provider for residential, commercial, government and utility applications, has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply Progress Energy Florida with renewable solar photovoltaic power from the Sorrento Eagle Dunes Solar Farm, a 40 megawatt utility-scale solar PV facility the company is developing in Central Florida.
With the acquisition of US-based CdTe thin-film start-up PrimeStar now behind GE, the conglomerate is planning to expand its investments in PV with the building of a 400MW manufacturing plant, potentially bringing its total investment in the sector to over US$600 million.
Sacramento City Council has approved SolarCity’s request to build a 1.9MW multi-site system in the city centre. When completed, the development will be the largest in Sacramento and generate 2.6 million kWh of electricity in the first year.
SunWize Systems has completed the first stage of its 4.45MW car park solar array. The system, situated on top of a Veteran’s Affairs (VA) medical center in Phoenix, Arizona, is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. and is expected to be completed in July 2012.
