Magazine Archive

Aldi stores: In Germany, Pohlen Bedachung has been taking care of roofing for Aldi for 40 years. In the last four years, the mid-sized firm has also been renting the discounter’s roofs to install photovoltaic arrays on them. Pohlen’s biggest customer eventually warmed up to photovoltaics, thanks to strict quality standards and constant system improvement. Aldi’s founders, the Albrecht brothers, also produce solar electricity now – on 59 store roofs.

CIGS thin film: In the lab, thin film modules based on copper-indium have very high efficiencies, but the capacity for mass production is only growing slowly. Now, Centrotherm offers a turnkey plant for such modules. If the firm wants to replicate the run on turnkey systems for silicon thin film, it still has to achieve some milestones.

Photovoltaics pioneer: When the self-educated scientist Stanford R. Ovshinsky announced the science of amorphous materials and semiconductors in the 1950s, very few recognized the future. Then he founded Energy Conversion Devices, which became one of the most successful solar companies. Today, the 87-year old is developing a one-gigawatt thin film production process intended to make solar energy cheaper than ever.

Roadmap 2020: The European Commission allotted a special role for photovoltaics in its Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET plan) for 2020. Here, an overview of the European roadmap to renewable energy is presented.

The story of solar electricity: The seventh part of our series highlighting chapters from John Perlin’s book, From Space to Earth, tells how the American railroad tuned to photovoltaics.

U.S. solar conference: The trend is towards large-scale solar plants and roof arrays with multi-megawatt capacity. Ensuring well-coordinated design and quality control is all the more important, as Solarpraxis’ symposium PV Power Plants 2009 – USA revealed.

Interview: HSBC Alternative Energy Analyst, Shishir Kumar Singh talks to pv magazine about his take on how the Asian silicon module manufacturers are performing in the international marketplace.

Italy: This year’s Solarexpo trade exhibition in Verona, Italy, turned out to be an exchange of good news. The renewal of the Conto Energia – the law governing feed-in tariffs for solar electricity in Italy – will not be long in coming and will focus on two new aspects. Furthermore, the respective tariffs will remain attractive.

Ranking: Which manufacturers are leading the pack? Who will make it to the top ten? pv magazine asked market researchers and analysts. In this edition: an analysis of the biggest crystalline module manufacturers and their strategies.

Triple Green, part 6: The days of float glass are numbered. The expenditure involved in its production drives up the price of modules and consumes too much energy. Inexpensive rolled glass, specially developed for solar modules, promises substantial savings in terms of energy, weight and material.