Located in the North Frisia area of Germany, in Wiefelstede, Solarpark Ammerland was developed by Martin Bucher on a former military airbase. Q-Cells, meanwhile, supplied around 200,000 of its Q.SMART CIGS thin-film solar modules, and provided technical support, and Module24 selected the equipment suppliers.
According to a statement released, the project was constructed in just eight weeks. It is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the needs of 6,000 households. Aquila Capital, an independent investment company, provided the investment needed.
"The Ammerland plant is proof of the fact that CIGS thin-film modules are eminently suitable for building efficient, profitable solar power plants," commented Marc Weißmüller, CEO at Module24 GmbH.
Q-Cells CIGS update
At present, the module supplier on the Solarpark Ammerland project Q-Cells is one of the largest CIGS manufacturers. However, it has had to wind back production in 2011. Q-Cells told pv magazine that its thin-film lines in Thalheim, Germany, are now running at 80 megawatts (MW) annual producton. This is significantly below its 135 MW full-production capacity.
Q-Cells modules have consistently achieved high efficiencies from its CIGS production. Module efficiency, at present, stands at 13.4 percent, which is one of the highest in the industry.
The company, which acquired the Swedish Solibro CIGS technology in 2009, says that it is currently looking for a partner to realize plans to expand its CIGS production. It has previously announced the intention to expand production to 500 MW and says that "talks are ongoing" with potential partners to do so.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.