Manufacturing

As Intersolar North America drew to a close, analysts left the industry with upbeat forecasts for the solar market. “Things couldn’t be better in 2010,” Jefferies analyst Jesse Pichel told pv magazine.

Premier Power Renewable Energy, Inc. has signed a contract to build a 0.5 megawatt (MW) solar power plant for Italian timber company Mirrione Francesco Legnami SRL, in Sicily. The company has also announced the opening of a new Southern California office in the U.S. to serve new and existing customers.

Eco Supplies Europe AB has successfully closed the acquisition of Gällivare Eco Supplies Europe AB, a Swedish producer of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules. The company has also completed a fully subscribed capital increase of €1.8 million.

The U.S. should be looked at as a long-term growth market said Shayle Kann, a senior analyst at GTM Research, during a talk at Intersolar North America in San Francisco, the U.S. on Thursday. “It’s not a place where you can come and develop projects and make a killing quickly,” he stated.

Scheuten Solar has implemented three turnkey photovoltaics (PV) systems consisting of a total of 4,380 PV modules for Warehouses de Pauw (WDP). The systems have been installed at three different WDP warehouses in Vilvoorde, Aalst and Zele, Belgium.

China-based Baoding Tianwei Solar Films, Ltd. (Tianwei) has placed an upgrade order to increase its production capacity of thin film silicon solar modules from 46 megawatts (MW) amorphous technology to 75 MW Micromorph technology with Oerlikon Solar.

American mounting system manufacturer Sunlink has told pv magazine at this year’s Intersolar North America trade show that it has bought California-based Blue Oak PV Products. The company declined to disclose the amount. The acquisition means it can expand its equipment range for building solar energy arrays.

The Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) has established a USD$5 million industry-university Energy research Initiative (ERI). It will initially address two areas: photovoltaics (PV) and systems and technologies to enable and optimize smart grids.

WIP, organizer of the 25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition/5th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (25th EU PVSEC/WCPEC-5), has announced that the exhibition area has been extended to 80,000 sqm, from 65,000 sqm last year, in order to accommodate more than 950 global exhibitors.

Imec says it has realized large-area (70cm2) epitaxial solar cells with efficiencies of up to 16.3 percent on high-quality substrates. Efficiencies of up to 14.7 percent were also achieved on large-area low-quality substrates, thus demonstrating “the potential of thin film epitaxial solar cells for industrial manufacturing”.