Solar Manufacturing News

The Swiss equipment maker has announced a fresh, CHF18 million order from Oxford PV but the news may have been strategically timed ahead of today’s update that it has completed the sale of its headquarters building.

The Chinese solar manufacturing giant will supply its latest modules to Singapore-based PV developer Hexagon Peak for a utility scale pipeline in Vietnam.

Leading PV manufacturing equipment supplier Meyer Burger Technology has received a further CHF 18 million (US$18.2 million) from partner, Oxford PV for the purchase of key equipment for a 125MW integrated production line to fabricate high-efficiency perovskite HJT tandem solar cells.

Bifacial module yields, manufacturer bankability probing and quality benchmarking strategies have all taken centre stage at this year’s edition of PV ModuleTech in Malaysia.

The Chinese e-mobility company has been hammered since Beijing’s abrupt reduction of electric vehicle subsidies in the summer. Korean outfit LG Chem’s shipment volumes have gone in the opposite direction.

The Chinese solar manufacturer today admitted it is in talks with its lenders and strategic investors about a break up of the company after its 2018 annual accounts revealed an apparently unserviceable debt pile. Any strategic investor is likely to constitute a Chinese state-backed bail-out.

Recently, PV-Tech took the opportunity to catch up with Erik Bentschap Knook, Chief commercial officer at Eternalsun Spire and a key partner at the forthcoming PV ModuleTech 2019 in Penang.

The rollercoaster witnessed in recent years by Taiwan’s solar manufacturers is written all over the words of Jenny Hsu, global sales manager of Motech Industries.

Taiwan’s government risks failing to make good on solar growth pledges unless it acts to clear structural hurdles such as land shortages, industry operators have warned at Energy Taiwan 2019.

Shareholders in the heavily-indebted solar project EPC and building-integrated PV manufacturer will vote on the last day of the month on the proposed takeover of the business by a Chinese state-backed entity. No news has emerged of a winding-up order due to be heard yesterday.

The Hong Kong-based solar manufacturer appears to have posted impressive revenue gains this year, based on preliminary, unaudited operating results for the first three quarters of 2019. But as the troubled company continues to pin its hopes on a much-anticipated turnaround in Chinese solar demand, its long-term outlook remains uncertain, mere weeks before the scheduled de-listing of its shares in Taiwan.

Major polysilicon producer Wacker Chemie has warned its overall group profitability for 2019 would be around 30% lower than the prior year, due to continued weak demand from the solar industry in China and continued polysilicon prices declines to industry record lows.

Taiwan will try and use its leverage as a global electronic and manufacturing hotspot to engineer a multi-gigawatt clean energy boom, government figures have said as they kickstarted this year’s edition of Energy Taiwan.

In the run up to our Greenwashing vs. verifiable sustainability webinar, the CEO of pv magazine’s UP initiative partner SMA Solar Technology, Jürgen Reinert, talks about what the inverter manufacturer is doing to prove its sustainability credentials.

There is movement in the heterojunction space, but will it be enough to surpass PERC’s momentum? New production lines show promise, but they might also be the last roll of the dice for Swiss production equipment supplier Meyer Burger.