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Thin-Film Solar Expands

Schuco, E.ON, China Stream Fund Solar Energy and XsunX push forward with their manufacturing-facility plans.

Schuco International and E.ON will build a $135 million factory to produce the world’s largest thin-film panels, the companies said Thursday.

The two Germany companies, which have formed a joint venture called Malibu, said they expect the manufacturing facility, to be built in Magdeburg, Germany, to start producing panels in the fall.

The announcement was part of a succession of thin-film production announcements Thursday.

China Stream Fund… Read More ›

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Solel Heats Up with $140M Solar Plant

The Israeli solar company says "¡sí!" to manufacturing solar-thermal equipment in Spain.

Israeli solar-thermal developer Solel said Wednesday it's forking out $140 million to build a manufacturing facility in southern Spain.

The plant will produce parts used in the construction of solar-thermal fields, including parabolic trough collectors. These curved mirrors are used to generate steam that in turn powers a turbine to produce electricity.

Solel, which develops and builds large solar fields, said the new plant would allow it to… Read More ›

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Battle for Home Solar Financing Begins

SolarCity signs a deal with Morgan Stanley that will cut homeowners' upfront solar-installation costs to about $2,000 and charge them a fixed monthly fee -- not a rate -- for solar power. It's the latest in a series of new programs trying to use a commercial financial model to grow the residential solar market.

SolarCity, which claims to be the largest residential solar installer in the United States, on Wednesday announced a new financing program that it said will cut homeowners’ upfront solar-installation costs from about $25,000 to about $2,000.

The SolarLease program, backed by Morgan Stanley, is not the first to tap into the idea of paying the upfront costs of solar-power installations in exchange for tax credits and an agreement that the… Read More ›

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Solar Roundup: Another Tax-Credit Proposal, Big Deals for Solar-Thermal and Thin-Film

As BrightSource signs the largest deal yet for solar-thermal and Nanosolar gets an additional $50 million and another customer, senators prepare yet another bill that would extend tax credits for renewables.

Two U.S. senators, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and John Ensign, R-Nev., are preparing to introduce a new renewable-energy tax-credit proposal within a week, Solar Energy Industries Association spokesperson Monique Hanis told Greentech Media on Tuesday. 

The bill would be a new take on a multiyear extension of tax credits set to expire at the end of this year (see Solar Sharpens Weapons for Incentive Battle and Solar Industry’s Five-Step Plan).

The… Read More ›

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Concentrating Solar to Reach 18 Gigawatts by 2020

A report by the Prometheus Institute and Greentech Media forecasts that concentrating solar-thermal and concentrating PV will make up 12 and 6 gigawatts of installed capacity, respectively, while standard flat-plate PV will make up the rest of a predicted 288-gigawatt market.

Companies will spend between $80 billion and $200 billion on concentrating-solar installations in the next 12 years, according to a report released Tuesday by the Prometheus Institute and Greentech Media.

That includes more than $30 billion worth of plants that companies have announced in just the last six months, according the report.

"While the conventional sources of energy will have increasing difficulty in simply maintaining prices and… Read More ›

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Solar Setback in San Francisco

A pilot program that would have heated San Francisco's solar market with $3 million in incentives -- and become the largest such program in the nation -- has been put on hold because of budget concerns. Sun Run president says uncertainty could make the city less attractive to solar companies.

San Francisco's solar incentive pilot program, expected to be the largest such municipal program in the country, has been put on hold.

Until this week, the program was slated to begin Monday. It would have set aside $3 million in rebates intended to bring 1.5 megawatts of solar installations to the city by offering between $3,000 and $4,000 for residential installations and up to $10,000 for commercial installations.

San Francisco Supervisor… Read More ›

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Large PV Gets Big Boost

AES Corporation and Riverstone Holdings join forces and funding to create AES Solar, a company that will own and operate large solar projects. The news could heat debate about whether solar-electric or solar-thermal technologies make more sense at that size.

Power company AES Corp. (NYSE: AES) and private equity firm Riverstone Holdings said Monday they have teamed up to pour up to $1 billion into a joint venture focused on developing large solar-electric projects around the world.

The two companies will each fork out up to $500 million over five years for the newly minted company, AES Solar, which will own and operate "utility-scale" solar installations. The company said the installations would… Read More ›

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Q&A: Global Solar VPs Dish Thin-Film Details

Thin-film solar VPs Jeffrey Britt and Tim Teich discuss the challenges, the competition and why they're confident they'll succeed, in spite of thin film's troubled past.

Earlier this month, thin-film solar company Global Solar Energy broke into mass production, opening a 40-megawatt plant in Tucson, Ariz.

The company, which makes thin films of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS), expects to produce 20 megawatts of the films at the plant this year before ramping up to 40 megawatts of capacity in 2009 and 140 megawatts by 2010 (see Competition for First Solar?). Global Solar also is building a 35-megawatt… Read More ›

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Slideshow: Solar Finance & Forecast

More than 150 industry leaders gathered in San Francisco for Greentech Media's first finance-focused event. Speakers discussed power-purchase agreements, public markets and government policy, and Prometheus Institute President Travis Bradford presented his updated solar forecast.

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Lux Predicts Solar Bubble About to Burst

After at least two similar projections, another report forecasts that solar supply will exceed demand as early as next year.

Lux Research on Wednesday joined the growing number of cleantech industry watchers predicting the supply of solar equipment will soon exceed demand.

Even as the New York-based research firm expects revenues to triple from $21.2 billion last year to $70.9 billion in 2012, it forecasts that 9.57 gigawatts of solar panels will be available in 2009, while demand for solar installations will cap out at 8.96 gigawatts. According to the report, the… Read More ›

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ReneSola Shares Dive 21%

Chinese solar-wafer manufacturer's stock falls, while German concentrating solar company raises an undisclosed sum.

Shanghai-based solar-wafer manufacturer ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) shares took a 20.9 percent nosedive Wednesday after the company released unaudited fourth-quarter earnings.

ReneSola shares fell $2.21 per share, closing at $8.35 per share Wednesday, then grew 3 percent to $8.60 per share in after-hours trading. It was unclear why the shares dropped, although StreetInsider.com speculated that it might have been a "buy the news" reaction, which means… Read More ›

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Global Solar Production 'Surprisingly Strong'

Global manufacturers increased production of solar cells by more than 50 percent last year, exceeding expectations as more silicon and thin-film solar came online.

Global solar-cell production grew 50.9 percent in 2007, reaching 3.7 gigawatts, Prometheus Institute President Travis Bradford said at a Greentech Media conference Monday.

The availability of more solar silicon than expected drove the "surprisingly strong" growth, he said at the Solar Finance & Forecast event.

According to the Prometheus Institute, producers had the capacity to make 30,075 tons of solar silicon, or enough to manufacture 2.71… Read More ›

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Funding Roundup: Solar, Biofuels Score Big Bucks

Range Fuels rakes in $100 million for cellulosic ethanol, Coskata gets $19.5 million for the same and Suntech acquires $100 million in shares of Nitol Solar.

Just when it seemed like investor interest in clean energy couldn’t get much stronger, a newly released report from Clean Edge forecast that revenues in four key sectors will triple over the next decade.

The revenues in the biofuel, wind-power, solar-photovoltaic and fuel-cell sectors shot up to $74 billion in 2007, a 40-percent increase from $55 billion in 2006. Moreover, the Clean Edge report projected that revenues in those sectors will… Read More ›

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Solar Roundup: Chinese Solar Buys and Brags

Chinese solar titan Suntech will snatch up to a $100 million stake in Russian silicon maker Nitol, LDK's stock surges more than 20 percent after bragging it's sold almost all of the wafers it can produce this year, while Akeena and Solarworld shares fall on earnings.

Suntech Power Holding (NYSE: STP) proved Thursday that solar manufacturers are still looking to protect themselves against a silicon shortage when the company said it will buy up to a $100 million minority stake in silicon producer Nitol Solar. 

The relationship between Chinese solar-panel manufacturer Suntech and Russia-based Nitol is not new. In August, Suntech struck a multiyear silicon supply agreement with Nitol.

Nitol said it’s currently… Read More ›

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Masdar Heats Up Concentrating Solar

Abu Dhabi greentech initiative Masdar has joined forces with Sener to build $1.2 billion worth of solar projects in the south of Spain.

Abu Dhabi’s alternative-energy initiative, Masdar, and the Spanish engineering group Sener Grupo de Ingeniería said Wednesday they have teamed up to bring more concentrating solar-power systems to the world’s sunbelt regions. 

The two have started the joint venture Torresol Energy, which will design, build and operate concentrating solar-power plants.

Sener owns the bulk of the newly minted company -- 60 percent -- while Masdar owns the rest.

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Suntech Wavers

After news that Chinese solar-silicon companies are polluting their home country, Suntech – which buys from one accused polluter – says it will raise up to $500 million. But its stock falls for two days straight before climbing Wednesday.

Suntech Power (NYSE: STP) said Tuesday it plans to raise between $425 million and $500 million by selling convertible senior notes to institutional investors in a private offering.

The solar-panel manufacturer said it will spend approximately $300 million of the cash to buy supplies, expand its production capacity and commercialize new technology. It plans to use the rest for "general corporate purposes," as well as potential investments and… Read More ›

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LDK Sinks on Silicon, Economic Fears

The Chinese solar-wafer manufacturer's shares hit an all-time low of $19.82 per share Monday after concerns about its inventory reporting, as well as fears of an economic recession -- and news that one of its silicon suppliers is dumping toxic waste in China.

LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) hit another record low of $19.82 per share Monday after closing below its IPO price of $27 per share every day last week.

The stock rebounded to $21.50 per share by the close of trading Monday, but that’s a 72 percent drop from September’s peak of $76.75. 

Monday’s share price was a 3.5 percent drop from LDK’s previous record low of $22.27, which it hit on June 12, less than two weeks after its May 31 initial public… Read More ›

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LDK Defends its Inventory Accounting

Responding to suspicions about its silicon, CEO Xiaofeng Peng said the company plans to use its entire inventory. It remains to be seen whether the comment will assuage concerns from analysts.

When LDK Solar separated its silicon inventory into material it could use within a year and material it couldn’t use within a year in its fourth-quarter earnings, it sparked new concerns about the company’s accounting practices among analysts (see Inventory Concerns Keep Haunting LDK).

"Would it, perhaps, not be more conservative accounting to take a write-down of such inventory then, rather than capitalizing it?" asked Credit Suisse analyst… Read More ›

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Competition for First Solar?

Global Solar Energy expects to open a 40-megawatt copper-indium-gallium-diselenide thin-film plant Thursday after Nanosolar in December began production of the same material and HelioVolt announced it would begin production this year. Will any of these companies give First Solar a run for its money?

Global Solar Energy plans to officially open a 40-megawatt thin-film plant in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday. 

The company already has been making strings of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) cells at a 4.2-megawatt demonstration plant the past three years. But the new plant will be the Tucson-based company’s first step into mass production.

"The opening of [Global Solar’s] plant in Tucson is a remarkable event," said Tom Kimbis, acting… Read More ›