Strategic Alliances

The Munich-based chemical company has taken a substantial minority share in the British materials specialist to expand its silicon-based high-performance battery activity. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

California-based Hanergy subsidiary Miasolé and European perovskite research institute Solliance have combined their thin film expertise to produce a 23% efficient flexible tandem device consisting of a semi-transparent perovskite cell on top of a flexible CIGS counterpart.

On the first day of this year’s EU PVSEC conference, veteran solar researcher Pierre J Verlinden won the Becquerel Prize for Outstanding Merits in Photovoltaics. The award recognized more than 40 years as a leading PV researcher in academia and at leading companies including Sunpower and Trina Solar. Its recipient spoke to pv magazine about what is needed from solar to stave off catastrophic climate change.

The German PV equipment provider will not achieve the sales and earnings targets set for this year. CNBM is not expected to place orders for the expansion of its CIGS thin-film production operations in China until the fourth quarter.

The debt-saddled developer has announced it is now almost 63% owned by Chinese state entities and is seeking to refinance its debt pile with new long-term arrangements, take on fresh debt and issue more shares.

While the rest of China’s solar manufacturers take on ever more debt to expand their production lines as fast as possible, Comtec said it is ready to sell off fabs for the right money and will instead focus on project sales and lithium battery and EV business opportunities.

The governments of the two African nations are considering deploying huge volumes of generation capacity over two decades. The project, still in its initial phase, is being supported by the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Energy.

A consortium of European research institutes has received €10.6 million in EU funding to establish pilot production of a high efficiency module concept developed by Swiss startup Insolight. The module combines high efficiency multijunction cells with a solar concentrator lens and has previously demonstrated 29% efficiency.

Two of Germany’s leading research institutes and a CIGS module maker have announced plans to work on the development of perovskite-CIGS tandem cells with a target of producing thin film modules with better than 30% efficiency.

The solar manufacturer and project developer appears to have secured a crucial rescue package funded by Chinese state-backed Water Development (HK) and has persuaded the holders of most of its $430 million in defaulted debt to accept a restructuring plan. Next up, the Hong Kong High Court.