Solar Manufacturing News

The industrial development of the bifacial solar module over the last few years represents one of the most significant events in the world of photovoltaic systems. Today, this technology constitutes one of the most promising trends in the global solar market. During Intersolar South America, Convert will present its bi-facial tracker, an innovative solution to gain more solar energy from the panels.

Major PV inverter manufacturer, SolarEdge Technologies has been forced to accelerate expedited shipping via air freight, despite a 25% increase in manufacturing capacity as the company continues to set quarter sales records.

Six months after settling claims in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of its U.S. distribution subsidiary, the Chinese PV maker says it has signed more than 500 MW of U.S. module supply contracts.

The Israeli inverter manufacturer saw its net profit decline 4% year-on-year to $33.1 million in the second quarter, despite shipping 1.3 GW and seeing a 43% increase in turnover. Gross margins were affected by the increase in U.S. tariffs on China made products.

First Solar reported a bumper quarter during Q2 by most metrics. The company’s net sales of $585 million were nearly double the previous year, on shipments 1.4 GW of product – the most in its history. Additionally, First Solar booked more than 2.1 GW of orders in July alone, a very positive start to Q3.

Major China-based polysilicon producer, Xinte Energy has signalled a significant decline in expected profits for the first half of 2019, due to polysilicon ASPs declining 43% from the prior year period.

Supported by an innovative portfolio contract with its power purchasers, Ormat Technologies has now started commercial operations of its innovative hybrid solar-geothermal power plant at Tungsten Mountain, Nevada.

New textile-based solar cells developed by Fraunhofer researchers, semitrailers could soon be producing the electricity needed to power cooling systems or other onboard equipment. In short, textile-based solar cells could soon be adding a whole new dimension to photovoltaics, complementing the use of conventional silicon-based solar cells.

Researchers at Siberian Federal University, together with colleagues from the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden), discovered new properties of material based on palladium, which can increase the performance of solar cells.

PV technology has made significant progress in a short amount of time, leaving solar enthusiasts chuffed. Opponents, on the other hand, brand it as unworkable boondoggle, surviving on the crutches of subsidies and only salving the conscience of the green-minded companies cosseted by political forces. The naysayers do have partial truth in their argument - governments the world over have been supporting the growth of this child with the moniker “solar” with public finances. So, this is the partial truth and the enthusiasts have just enough firepower to say that all energy is, after all, subsidised one way or another – in terms of uncompensated costs of air pollution, congestion and global warming and the consequential irreversible damage these fossil fuels have done to the planet. Perhaps more important and statistically relevant is a report published by the IMF in 2015, which had pegged subsidies to fossil fuels at US$5.3 trillion.

The state enterprise Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) issued at the beginning of the month a tender for 1,200MW of renewable power that can be used to alleviate peak demand issued on the grid, in effect mandating the use of energy storage systems (ESS).

‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member JA Solar has supplied its bifacial double-glass PERC modules to a 2.5MW rooftop project at a Goodyear tire manufacturing facility in Shah Alam, Malaysia, the country's largest such project.

Ongoing US-China trade tensions will not ruin solar fortunes on either side as players adapt by redrawing the lines of global supply flows, Fitch Solutions has predicted.

Leading microinverter supplier, Enphase Energy shipped over 1.2 million units in the second quarter of 2019, with its latest IQ 7 model accounting for around 98% of shipment total.

As clean energy stakeholders urge Arizona regulators to adopt stronger renewable energy standards, Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) has announced plans to add new solar and wind resources, helping expand the company’s renewable energy portfolio to about 2.5 GW by 2021, which would be enough to power more than half a million Arizona homes.