Signs of solar life
Applied Materials talks up its solar game at EU PVSEC, VDMA members begin to see end of PV equipment downturn Last week’s Silicon Planet-shaking news of the Applied Materials-Tokyo Electron merger (acquisition?) was enveloped by a cone of near-silence regarding the...
More solar, less wind
BNEF sees global PV installations outpacing wind in 2013, Thailand and Turkey top emerging region list, big Chilean project will compete on spot market You can soon add one more chapter to solar power’s remarkable growth story. This year, for the first time, the...
Solar installation checklist
IREC offers inspection template for rooftop PV systems, Clean Power Finance adds O&M; marketplace, Solar Maid gets its hands dirty As the rooftop solar revolution spreads like wildfire across much of the United States, more states and municipalities are seeing...
Whither solar in the ‘merger of equals’?
Conjoining of Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron raises questions about fates of solar PV production equipment units Nothing like a corporate M&A bombshell to get the juices flowing first thing in the morning. Tuesday’s news of the “merger of equals” between...
Solar manufacturing models in dispute
Market research firms square off over question of outsourced ‘fabless’ solar manufacturing approach, Soitec shatters CPV cell efficiency record While fabricating a crystalline-silicon solar cell is indeed another form of semiconductor manufacturing–and the respective...
Solar panels ‘Made in the USA’…or not?
Texas Attorney General alleges PV module manufacturer 1SolTech relabeled Chinese panels as U.S. made Here’s a quick one before the weekend from the Curator’s ironic breaking news files. One of the few U.S. solar panel manufacturers left standing—a number that shrank...
Solar data junkies, take heart!
New MW-scale solar installations come in strong second in latest FERC data, while First Solar breaks ground on another big PV project, earns top honors on SPW Top 250 list The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, better known by its nicknamey acronym FERC, tracks the...
Concentrating solar power mixed signals
Several CSP projects set to go live this year, but sector faces serious challenges at Palen and elsewhere Nearly a gigawatt of concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) plants should be completed and come online in the United States by the end of 2013, according to the...
Second to none
New ‘U.S. Solar Market Insight’ Q2 report finds robustness among the lumpiness The market analyst term “lumpiness” has a certain tactility to it, a suggestion of inconsistency that suits the uneven economic conditions that it describes. But just because an industrial...
Solar due diligence
SolarPro magazine performs industry service with the mother of all PV module reliability feature articles Although almost every magazine I read incorporates extra bells and whistles in the digital domain—and many have eschewed print altogether—when that bound...