Solon insolvent

pv-magazine: Berlin-based Solon SE is the latest 2011 solar market victim, having announced yesterday evening that it has filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings. The company says that despite its efforts over the past few months to financially restructure its operations, which included holding discussions with investors, financial institutions and guarantors, "negotiations on an amicable solution failed".

Reuters: Solon's insolvency filing is likely to be followed by other high-profile German solar company failures, analysts said, as the blood-letting in the global industry intensifies. (...) Solar companies in Europe and the United States have been hit hard by a toxic mix of oversupply, falling prices, low-cost Asian competition and lower government subsidies on which the industry still depends. (...) Swiss bank Sarasin said in a recent study, published before Solon's filing, that Conergy and Q-Cells were among the German solar companies most exposed to the sector's crisis.

Solar Grid Parity Is Here Today

Greentech Media
The price of solar energy-generated electricity, calculated by a legitimate levelized cost of energy (LCOE) method, is now competitive in many regions with the price of electricity generated by conventional sources.

Paper: K. Branker, M.J.M. Pathak, J.M. Pearce, A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 15, Issue 9, December 2011, Pages 4470-4482

Microinverter Wars: Enecsys and Enphase go Transatlantic

Greentech Media
The battle of the solar microinverters is heating up, and here’s one potential Trans-Atlantic match-up. On one side you’ve got U.S.-based Enphase, which has shipped 1 million microinverters at home and is planning an IPO. On Monday the Petaluma, Calif.-based startup announced that it’s invading Europe via France, Belgium and the Netherlands, where its devices have passed Continental standards and are ready to be installed. On the other side you’ve got Enecsys, a British startup with only tens of thousands of European solar rooftops carrying its microinverters, though it claims a big potential advantage in Germany. On Tuesday the startup announced a partnership that allows it to sell in Canada’s Ontario province’s lucrative solar market, its first big landing on North American shores.

Solar trade war - update

Businessweek - The U.S. International Trade Commission voted unanimously in Washington today in a preliminary ruling on the petition by Bonn-based SolarWorld calling for antidumping and countervailing duties. The commission will now proceed with a full investigation.

Reuters - China said it was "deeply concerned" about a preliminary ruling by a U.S. trade body that trade practices by Chinese solar makers are hurting U.S. producers and said the decision underscored a U.S. "inclination to trade protectionism."

Winners of the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and WSN Awards

Energy Harvesting Journal
Nothing to do with PV but a home celebration anyway: David Pera and Pedro Gomes have been awarded the best academic poster award at the IDTechEx in Boston this November.
"Of the academic posters on show at the event, the winning poster was awarded to David Pera and Pedro Gomes of the University of Lisboa, for E-Turbine - Eolic Concentrator for Energy Harvesting in Highways and Urban Environments. One judge commented, Very new and innovative. Lots of applications.

For more information about the next IDTechEx awards on this topic, see www.IDTechEx.com/Boston

Silver-free heterojunction silicon solar cells

Imec news
At the 21st International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference in Fukuoka, Japan, Kaneka and imec present silver-free heterojunction silicon solar cells. The results were obtained by applying copper electroplating technology, which was developed by Kaneka based on imec’s existing copper electroplating technology, A conversion efficiency of more than 21% was achieved in 6-inch silicon substrates with an electroplated copper contact grid on top of the transparent conductive oxide layer.

SCHOTT announces improved efficiencies with Quasimono wafers, PV cells using low-cost metal contacts

SolarServer
SCHOTT Solar AG (Mainz, Germany) has reached 19.9% efficiency with wafers made using its Quasimono wafers.
"With Quasimono, SCHOTT Solar has now developed a new technique for manufacturing full-square high-performance wafers that contain a high monocrystalline share that is significantly more cost-effective than the standard processes used in the past," declared SCHOTT in a press statement. (...) SCHOTT notes that the efficiencies that it has reached with PV cells made from Quasimono wafers come close to the record efficiencies that it achieved with monocrystalline PV cells. SCHOTT's development team is currently further refining the process, which is supported by the German government as part of the Quasimono research project.

Las VeGaS project to replace silver contacts with nickel-copper plating
The 18% efficiency that SCHOTT has reached using multicrystalline PV cells with copper contacts is part of its Las VeGaS project, which seeks to largely replace the silver contacts in PV cells with less expensive nickel-copper plating. If successful, this would reduce the manufacturing costs of metallization by more than half.