Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Shunfeng International Clean Energy expects its annual losses to have widened to around $255 million last year, up from $125 million in the preceding 12-month period.

Indian company Amtronics CC has paid Quantum Materials Corp an initial $500,000 as part of an agreement securing the right to manufacture quantum dots and thin-film quantum dot solar cells based on QMC technology for commercial supply in India. Construction has already started on a manufacturing facility in the state of Assam.

The deadline for the Solar Energy Corporation of India’s latest attempt to incentivize solar manufacturing, by offering generation capacity, has come and gone. The government body’s attempts to kick-start domestic production have thus far made little headway.

The new CEO of SolarPower Europe, Walburga Hemetsberger, explained her goals for the development of the European solar industry in the next 10 years when interviewed by pv magazine during the association’s SolarPower Summit in Brussels.

Real estate and logistics company owner Cheung Shun Lee is making a third attempt to relist a company whose shares have been suspended for five-and-a-half years, and whose corporate history during that time reads like a soap opera.

The Swiss solar equipment maker has endorsed a claim by Chinese solar manufacturer Longi that the technology it uses differs from that at the center of Hanwha Q Cells’ patent infringement complaints.

The Wuhu-based solar glass maker and PV project developer expects to raise around $167 million to expand operations after diluting stock by issuing shares equivalent to just under 5% of the business.

Profits and revenues were down in a year which saw average selling prices slump – especially after the turbulence in the Chinese market – but the company’s hell-for-leather dash for production capacity expansion and aggressive cost cutting mitigated the ill effects. And there is more to come in the year ahead.

German engineering association the VDMA expects PV system prices to continue to fall, as set out in the latest International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics report. Falling production costs and rising cell and module performance levels will secure long term competitiveness for PV in the energy mix, says the report. VDMA estimates global production capacity for PV modules reached 150 GW last year.

The Korean solar manufacturer has lodged a lawsuit with the Federal Court of Australia against Chinese panel makers Jinko and Longi following similar allegations in the U.S. and Germany.