Solar panel demand finally catching up with supply
One of the biggest, most depressing stories in the solar industry has been the oversupply of panels, which drove down prices and discouraged investors for most of 2009. Now, new research out of trade research firm iSuppli, suggests that demand will catch up with supply by the end of next year — good news for the growing number of solar panel and component makers.
One of the forces deflating demand was a rollback of solar subsidies… Continue Reading
Sempra and First Solar join forces for Nevada solar farm
Sempra Energy, the major utility and energy services company in Southern California, announced today that it has contracted First Solar to build a 48-megawatt array of solar panels in the Nevada desert, dubbed Copper Mountain. The facility is expected to start producing electricity within the year, reports the Wall Street Journal.
This is not the first time Sempra has worked with First Solar. It also tapped the Tempe, Ariz. company to construct its 10 megawatt solar… Continue Reading
Prism Solar looks to raise ambitious $150M for solar hologram plant
Prism Solar Technologies, maker of concentrating solar film that is said to up the efficiency and cut the cost of solar panel installations, has launched its second round of funding — hoping to bring in at least $150 million to finance the restoration of an old New York factory into a manufacturing facility, reports VentureWire.
The company acquired the 6.5-acre site for $3.75 million. Based in Highland, N.Y., it includes 93,000 square feet of plant space,… Continue Reading
The economy clouds solar’s skies
For a while, it seemed that the solar power sector would weather the downturn fairly unscathed — but it hasn’t been so lucky, at least in the short run. Not only has venture capital dried up for experimental technology startups, but fewer and fewer homeowners are able to afford upgrades like rooftop solar panels, reports the San Jose Mercury News. The frozen credit market has only made matters worse, stalling capital projects — like utility-scale… Continue Reading
eSolar nabs $30M licensing deal for Indian plants
eSolar has been focusing increasingly on building large-scale plants in the U.S., and shedding plans to do the same overseas. Just last week, it announced that it sold its rights to build 500 megawatts worth of solar-thermal plants to NRG Energy for $10 million in equity. Now it’s licensing its technology to Indian power company Acme Group, which will use it to build solar-thermal plants in India capable of producing 1,000 megawatts. In exchange, Acme… Continue Reading
Ausra lowers sights on solar plants, cuts staff
Solar energy company Ausra announced that it no longer plans to build massive solar thermal plants across the southwest and California desert due to poor economic conditions, shifting its focus to smaller-scale power generation plants. To weather the downturn, the Palo Alto, Calif. firm is also placing more emphasis on selling its technology and equipment assets to utilities and related companies.
For most of 2008, Ausra was working on solar plants costing up to $1 billion,… Continue Reading
Are the economies of scale in PG&E’s 800 megawatt solar installation real?
Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility that services much of northern and central California, has announced plans to buy electricity from an 800 megawatt solar panel installation, a vast project many times the size of anything currently existing.
The move is somewhat surprising, because the expectation was that utilities would first work on building more solar thermal plants, which focus sunlight with mirrors to drive steam turbines, before building large plants with costly solar panels. At… Continue Reading
Ontario makes dark horse bid for North American cleantech crown
While the United States has remained at an impasse over the extension of its clean energy tax credits, the Canadian province of Ontario has been busy positioning itself as a go-to destination for cleantech’s mountains of cash.
Ontario initiated a flurry of incentive programs aimed at increasing its overall renewable energy production capacity in early 2004 through its 20-year energy plan, dubbed the Integrated Power System Plan (IPSP). Its goals were to obtain an extra 5… Continue Reading
Duke Energy invests $100M in rooftop solar projects
Duke Energy — hardly your conventional renewable energy startup — has thrown its hat in the solar ring with a $100 million investment in commercial-scale rooftop solar panels.
The Charlotte, North Carolina, based electric utility will partner with commercial and residential property owners to tap into a growing market that has seen large investments in recent months from major utilities like Southern California Edison, which unveiled its own $875 million rooftop project in late March.
Like SCE,… Continue Reading
HelioVolt claims CIGS thin film efficiency record
HelioVolt CEO BJ Stanbery is set to announce that his company has set a new speed record for CIGS conversion efficiency, ratcheting up the pressure in the competitive, high-stakes thin-film solar cell sector. The Austin, Texas, start-up, which raked in a cool $101 million in second round funding last October, claims its proprietary FASST reactive transfer printing process can produce cells with a 12.2% conversion efficiency in a mere 6 minutes.
This latest technological breakthrough comes… Continue Reading
We should be talking more about Optisolar — a solar startup with big plans
Firms need attention to thrive, right? Well, no, not always — some companies prefer to remain in stealth until they’ve reached some milestone, or maybe just indefinitely.
Put Optisolar, a manufacturer of thin-film solar panels, in that latter category. When we first reported on Optisolar a year ago, it was planning to build one of the world’s biggest solar farms in sunny Ontario, Canada and it was doing it quietly. Now it appears that business is… Continue Reading
Small municipal plants could be the future for solar power
Writing on Nanosolar’s blog, CEO Martin Roscheisen has unveiled the next prong in his firm’s business plan — a focus on municipal solar power plants of 2 – 10 megawatts in size. The idea is to build 10 acre lots on the outskirts of small cities that could feed into the municipal power grid directly.
Each lot, consisting of several rows of solar panels mounted on rails above ground, could provide up to 2 megawatts, enough… Continue Reading
Secretive Silicon Valley company, OptiSolar, builds largest solar farm
A secretive Hayward, Calif. company has just announced it will build the largest solar power “farm” in North America, using solar cells manufactured in Silicon Valley.
The site, near Sarnia in Ontario, Canada, will be enough to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days, drawing on a monstrous 40-megawatt capacity. The company, called OptiSolar, is backed by private equity firms apparently with oil connections. It has studiously avoided saying anything until this announcement.
The deal… Continue Reading