Solar Manufacturing News

Chinese solar panel maker Risen Energy has signed off on an order to provide 150MW of high-efficiency PV modules to a power station in Malaysia. This stands as the biggest module order Risen Energy has ever carried out to date both in Malaysia and from an overseas floating power station.

The Chinese company has announced it has acquired intellectual property rights pertaining to various applications of gallium-doped silicon wafers in solar cell applications from Japanese company Shin-Etsu Chemical.

The offer was apparently submitted by Saudi energy giant ACWA Power, which refused to confirm the bid when asked by pv magazine. The second lowest bid – $0.0175/kWh – was reportedly submitted by a consortium formed by Emirati developer Masdar, French utility EDF and Chinese PV panel maker JinkoSolar.

After emerging as the recipient of most of the Brazilian government’s public allocation of generation capacity, the Canadian-Chinese manufacturer has secured a large share of projects in auctions held by power companies Copel and, probably, Cemig.

Solar and storage developer 7X Energy has spent more than US$100 million to stockpile 2GWac of Power Electronics inverters in order to take advantage of the full investment tax credit (ITC) before it starts to taper next year.

Norwegian polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon announced last Thursday it is considering selling its silane gas facility in Butte, in the US state of Montana.

The office of the U.S. Trade Representative has removed the exemption of bifacial products from Section 201 tariffs, effective October 28.

The Total Solar International PV unit of the French oil giant has started construction of a large scale plant in Osato, in the prefecture of Miyagi, Japan. With its third solar project in Japan, Total will reach 100 MW of installed generation capacity in less than two years.

Researchers from Canada have unveiled a new germanium deposition process which is said to eliminate threading dislocations and be significantly cheaper than previous approaches. The scientists say their technique creates nanovoids on the surface of the germanium layer which can attract and annihilate undesirable dislocations.

Developer Hydrogen Renewables Australia (HRA) and German engineering giant Siemens have unveiled plans for a hydrogen production facility in Western Australia, meant to be powered by a whopping 5GW of wind and solar.

U.S. manufacturers First Solar and SunPower could be among the winners following the announcement that the Trump administration will impose a 25% tariff on bifacial panels, although analysts warned that the new tariffs could be an overall negative for the industry.

Inverter manufacturer Solaredge has filed three additional patent infringement lawsuits against its competitor, Huawei, in China. This comes after three similar legal actions against Huawei that had been undertaken by Solaredge in Germany last summer. While Huawei has decided not to comment on the matter, the Chinese manufacturer revealed that it had filed three patent litigation claims against Solaredge at a Chinese court this May.

The US government has extended its solar import tariffs to bifacial modules, in a policy u-turn set to partially redraw the global trade flows of the fast maturing technology.

The polysilicon company draws another bad hand in the trade war.

The U.S. Trade Representative has not responded to claims it will end the exemption from Section 201 duties. If true, the development could be a big hit for Asian PV manufacturers and an annoyance for the U.S. market – but a positive for First Solar.