The Export-Import Bank of the United States has approved $61 million in loan guarantees to Seoul-based Gochang Solar Park Co. for buying solar panels from SolarWorld Industries America and building five power plants in Korea.

The loan guarantees allow Gochang Solar Park to borrow money from the Private Export Funding Corp. The financing includes the $10.2 million for constructing the power plants, the Ex-Im Bank said Wednesday. The loans are to be repaid in 13.5 years. The bank has provided loan guarantees for other solar business development before, including a $25 million credit line to United Solar Ovonic in Auburn Hills, Mich. last year. 

The bank, the export credit agency of the U.S. government, created the Office of Renewable Energy and Environmental Exports in 2007 to expand its effort on helping American companies export their goods and services. In the last five years, the bank has provided $400 million in loan guarantees and other types of financing to renewable energy companies in solar, wind and geothermal sectors, said Craig O'Connor, director of the bank's renewable energy office. 

The five power plants in Korea, with a combined capacity of 15 megawatts, were completed last September and are generating power on a 97-acre land in southwestern Korea. The electricity is sold to Korea Electric Power Corp. under a 15-year deal. Gochang completed the projects by lining up the financing in Korea first, a move made to meet deadlines and benefit from Korea’s feed-in tariff, which is a government-set price for solar electricity. The Korean financing is now converted into the Ex-Im Bank’s loan guarantees, the bank said.

SolarWorld Industries America is based in Hillsboro, Ore., where it opened a silicon wafer and solar cell factory last October. It has a 100-megawatt panel assembly factory in Camarillo, Calif.

The company is the North American subsidiary of the Germany company, SolarWorld AG. SolarWorld AG recently built a 150-megawatt solar panel factory in South Korea via its joint venture with SolarPark Engineering Co.

Live blogging from the BIPV Summit in San Diego -- Stanford "Stan" Ovshinsky, now 86-years old, is the Yoda of the solar market. In his words, "I lived through the great depression but I didn't know what was that great about it." He, along with his wife, co-founded ECD in 1960 and are some of the pioneers of renewable energy technology. He's the inventor of ECD's flexible solar (triple junction a-Si) as well as many of the nickel-metal-hydride batteries used in today's electric vehicles. He has 400 U.S. patents. Ovshinsky was the keynote speaker at todays' BIPV summit in San Diego. Raised in the machine shops and factories of Akron Ohio in what was then the rubber capital of the world, Ovshinsky started raising money in 1977 to advance amorphous and disordered material.  In 1980 he started building a machine. Ovshinsky's critics and competitors call his original machine a white elephant -- eight generations of commercial machines later, ECD has a production machine with 30 megawatts of annual capacity.  It's a low-cost continuous web machine akin to  newspaper and photographic film production (technologies that Stanford acknowledged might not be around much longer. "You've got be make it cheap, not low cost" Stan left ECD in 2007 and started Ovshinsky Innovation LLC.  He left because the board did not share his vision of tremendous growth. A subsidiary of his new firm, Ovshinsky Solar, looks to build 1 gigawatt of solar electrical production at a cost lower than coal.  Ovshinsky agrees with Dr, Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy in believing that solar has to be five times better. A few quotes:

• "We need to use science and technology to change the world."

• "What drove me wasn't awards, or money or power. ECD, in its' time, was a place for people of all races to reach their potential and work together for a common cause to change the world."

• "If you put it on a personal basis, what you are doing is making a fair and equitable world and saving a planet worth saving."

A great man and an inspirational life. You can read mores about Stanford Ovshinsky here and here.

Japan brought back national solar subsidies in January and, so far, the response has been a bit underwhelming.

The government is providing 70,000 yen ($700) per kilowatt for installing a solar energy system, or roughly 10 percent of a 3.5-kilowatt system. It thought the program would attract 35,000 applications for the first three months of this year.

The Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said the program drew 21,653 applications instead, reported Reuters. Consumers apparently don’t want to spend money on a solar energy system when the economy is bad.

The government brought back the subsidies after discontinuing it several years ago. Cutting the program led to a decline of solar power installations. When Japan was looking at resurrecting the subsidies last year, government officials said they believed the decision to end the incentive program had hurt Japanese solar energy equipment makers.

Countries that have enacted generous solar incentives, such as Germany and Spain, have seen a growth of homegrown solar cell and panel makers. The government programs don’t require project developers to buy equipment from only domestic manufactures. But those local companies could enjoy some home-territory advantage.

U.S. manufacturers are hoping that the federal subsidies that are in place will boost their business as well. There is a 30 percent tax credit for offsetting the cost of installing a solar energy system at home. Owners of the commercial systems could take either a 30 percent tax credit or the equivalent in cash.

Q-Cells and LDK Solar said they are forming a joint venture to develop large-scale power plants to buyers in Europe and China.

LDK Solar has been supplying silicon wafers to Q-Cells, which turns those wafers into solar cells and sell them to panel makers. Q-Cells said the joint venture would enable both companies to work more closely together and offer better deals to customers. The joint venture, LQ Energy, would contract with panel makers to produce the panels for the power plant projects. 

Both companies also figured that they could take advantage of each other’s marketing know-how in their home territories. LDK is based in China while Q-Cells is Germany. The companies said they have started their first, 40-megawatt project in Europe, and are shopping for a buyer.

Both companies have been hit by the economic downturn. Q-Cells has cut sales forecast for 2009 twice since December. LDK has delayed a factory expansion plan and has had to deal with customers who can’t pay as promised.

LDK’s shares on the New York Stock Exchange rose 4 percent in recent trading to reach $7.06 per share.

I’m writing this from a BIPV Summit in San Diego. There are about 100 people attending, rather scant for a solar event, but it's an interesting group.  Utilities, roofers, architects, and the usual suspects from the PV world -- Suntech, Solyndra, Heliovolt, some startup called Pythagoras Solar. First let’s make the distinction between BAPV and BIPV.  BAPV is Building Applied PV -– it’s a retrofit added to the building long after construction, while BIPV is Building Integrated PV and it means just that -- the architects, building designers, building owners designed the photovoltaics into the skin and roof of the building from day one. And as of now -- it’s a tiny market.  Lots of potential, but tiny.  Nadav Enbar, Research Manager, of Energy Insights, estimates that the total amount of installed BIPV, even with the most aggressive estimates, is about 70 megawatts.  Lux Research says that 97 megawatts was installed last year but they are probably including BAPV as well.  Suntech's Leonard May, Director of BIPV Products, claims to have shipped $80 million in BIPV last year. And that’s a tiny sliver of world PV. But it feels like we’re at the inflection point of this market.  The new format of the U.S. investment tax credit and Europe’s new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive are policy tools that will  serve to accelerate BIPV penetration. Despite the potential, there are very few pure-play BIPV firms, and there are very few VC-funded BIPV firms. Here is a small gallery of examples of BIPV.  More info on BIPV in the next blog post.

The Indian company Green Infra has set a goal of having 500 megawatts of renewable energy in its portfolio by 2012. Wind energy will stand for 300 megawatts of the clean power investment while small-sized solar power projects will generate 100 megawatts. The rest will come from biomass and small gas-based projects. Green Infra is promoted by IDFC Private Equity Fund. The new green power project will need an investment of Rs 3,000 crore, according to Projects Today, the Indian projects database Website. But the investment will also be supported by various Indian Government incentives. As a commercial player in this field, Green Infra can benefit from concessional import duty on certain components of wind electric generators, excise duty exemption, get ten years’ tax holiday on income generated from wind power projects and benefit from an accelerated depreciation and loan from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA). According to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India has had a total of 26.95 billion units of electricity generated from wind power projects during the last three years. On the same note, MNRE has fixed a target for the whole country of 10,500 megawatts coming from wind power by 2012, according to The Economic Times. And the incentives from the Government are crucial to the development. "The robust growth in the country's wind power generation is largely driven by the incentives provided by the government to companies which set up wind power farms," said Santosh Kamath, KPMG Advisory Services' Associate Director, to The Economic Times.

BP Solar yesterday said it would cut 620 jobs and outsource manufacturing, a shift in fortunes for the large manufacturer and a sign of the times. But there was one more thing to mention. The company said in a phone call that it had dropped development of CIGS (cadmium indium gallium selenide) solar cells. "We looked at it at one point in the lab, but are doing nothing with it now," wrote a BP spokesman. CIGS or CIS solar cells represent the future of thin film, according to advocates. These solar cells cost less than crystalline cells but are more efficient than amorphous silicon solar cells. Still, they aren't easy to make. A few companies -- Solyndra, Nanosolar -- are manufacturing CIGS cells but in relatively limited quantities. One of the big fears for the startups has been the impact of large manufacturers on the market. Honda and Shell are the two largest players with eyes on CIGS. BP had been mentioned in the past as well-heeled company that could make an impact. But apparently not anymore.