Nanosolar Reborn as German Silicon Module and BIPV Manufacturer

Greentech Media
Nanosolar was acquired by Smartenergy Renewable and has been rechristened "Smartenergy Renewables Deutschland GmbH." But no CIGS thin-film solar remains in the equation. The new company will now be a crystalline silicon module assembly, a building-integrated PV manufacturer, and an O&M firm, claiming advantage in vertical integration. And manufacturing in Germany. The company will continue to support existing CIGS customers.

For the full story, as seen from the sit of the former Nanosolar CEO can be read here.

First Solar offers to recycle Abound's abandoned panels

The Denver Post
[First Solar, the] competitor to bankrupt Abound Solar says it would gladly recycle about 100,000 of the company's discarded panels. Colorado officials recently ordered Abound to clean up the waste. First Solar in Tempe, Ariz., said it has approached its one-time opponent and the trustee overseeing Abound's bankruptcy case with the offer to recover materials from the solar panels. "We've reached out to see if our recycling facilities can get their modules," said Alan Bernheimer, public relations director for First Solar's Americas division.
The offer as-yet has no parameters or money attached, details Bernheimer said are still being worked out.
Colorado health and environment officials in January ordered Loveland-based Abound to clean up hazardous waste at four Front Range locations, citing thousands of "unsellable" solar panels and thousands of gallons of toxic liquids. The panels contain cadmium telluride, of which cadmium is considered a toxic substance and a known carcinogen by federal health agencies. U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee Adam Singer estimated the cost of the whole cleanup to be $2.2 million.

Colorado orders Abound Solar to clean up hazardous waste at four sites

The Denver Post
Colorado health and environment officials have ordered Loveland-based Abound Solar, the bankrupt solar-panel maker, to clean up hazardous waste at four Front Range locations.The Abound facilities are storing thousands of "unsellable" solar panels and thousands of gallons of toxic liquids, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reports.
"The Department views these 2,000 pallets of solar panels as a characteristic hazardous waste for cadmium," a report on a Denver warehouse said. (...) The cost of the cleanup is estimated by the trustee to be $2.2 million.
(...) Abound stopped shipping nonfunctioning panels to a recycler in Wisconsin in February 2012 "due to cost constraints," according the bankruptcy trustee. Health-department inspectors found 3,600 pallets of Abound panels in a Denver warehouse and said a little more than half of them were not sellable. At Abound's former Longmont factory, inspectors found 30 55-gallon drums of cadmium-contaminated fluids and two large tanks with a total of 2,500 gallons of cadmium-contaminated water. At a Longmont warehouse, 500 pallets of defective panels were found by inspectors. And at a research-and-development facility, additional cadmium waste was found, Schieffelin said. "At both manufacturing facilities, there is a probability of cadmium contamination throughout the buildings," Schieffelin said.

First Solar reports record sales in 4Q 2012, unveils 18.7% efficient solar PV cell

SolarServer
First Solar Inc. has released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2012, reporting record revenues of USD 1.08 billion at a 16% operating margin in the fourth quarter. First Solar has also unveiled an 18.7% efficient solar photovoltaic (PV) cell, a world record for cadmium telluride thin-film technology. Based on this new efficiency, the company will be updating its efficiency and cost reduction road maps. (...) The record has been verified by the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL, Golden, Colorado, US). First Solar notes that the cell was constructed on a glass substrate using processes and materials that are designed for commercial-scale manufacturing.
First Solar states that during 2012 it completed its restructuring efforts to orient the company towards “sustainable” markets which are not based on subsidies. As part of these changes, it expanded its geographical reach, with new subsidiaries in the Middle East, South Africa, Thailand and India in 2012 [and has] also acquired Solar Chile and the company's project pipeline. However, the majority of large projects the company is currently constructing are in the United States, including the 550 MW Topaz Project and the 290 MW Agua Caliente project.
The company's restructuring came at a cost of USD 469 million in 2012. Over the full year, First Solar achieved USD 3.37 billion in revenues, but an operating margin of -1.1% and a net loss of USD 96.3 million. However, the worst appears to be over, and First Solar expects to report only USD 10 million in expenses from this restructuring in 2013.

Layoffs at Nanosolar

SiliconBeat
Nanosolar, the solar manufacturer located in South San Jose’s Edenvale clean-technology zone, had layoffs on Friday. An anonymous caller to the San Jose Mercury News said Monday that Nanosolar laid off 75 percent of its workforce Friday. I have not been able to confirm that figure, and don’t know how many full-time employees Nanosolar had on the payroll. But it seems clear from the company’s statement that the reduction-in-force was significant. “Nanosolar did experience a workforce reduction last week,” wrote Susan Lehman, a public relations person who works with the company, in an email Monday. “At this time, the company is in a quiet period and will not be issuing any formal statements. Once we have more information to share, we will provide additional details.”

US: Thin film solar energy sells cheaper than coal fired

pv-magazine
According to the terms of the proposed PPA for the 50 MW Macho Springs solar park in New Mexico, First Solar would be selling the energy generated by its thin film modules for a record low price for the technology.
News agency Bloomberg cites a New Mexico Public Regulation Commission document relating to the yet-to-be-agreed PPA in which El Paso Electric Company agrees to pay just US$57.90/MWh generated at Macho Springs.

 The resulting $0.0579, or six cents, per kWh is less than half the average price of energy generated by new coal-fired power stations (12.8c/kWh) and significantly less than the typical price of thin film generated power (16.3c/kWh, both according to figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance).

Empa reaches 20.4% efficiency with flexible CIGS solar PV cell

SolarServer
On January 17th, 2013 Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa, Zürich, Switzerland) announced that it has achieved a world record 20.4% efficiency with a copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) solar photovoltaic (PV) cell on a flexible substrate.
The new record was verified by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Freiburg, Germany), and also exceeds the current 20.3% world record for CIGS PV cells.

First Solar Restructuring, Closing Frankfurt, Idling Lines in Malaysia, RIF in US and EU

Greentech Media
First Solar is closing its Frankfurt (Oder) manufacturing facility and indefinitely idling four production lines of the 24 lines in Kulim, Malaysia. The firm reports that it expects a savings of $100 million to $120 million annually as a result. First Solar also paid down $145 million in debt. The company is slashing headcount by 2,000 positions -- about 30 percent of its workforce. The firm wants to get opex down to 8 percent of revenue.

New JRC report highlights risk of rare earth metal shortages

JRC - European Commission
A shortage of five rare metals could slow down the development of the renewable energy market and of photovoltaics, according to a report published by the EU research institute Joint Research Centre (JRC). The Critical Metals in Strategic Energy Technologies report found that large-scale deployment of solar power technologies alone would require 50 percent of the current world supply of tellurium and 25 percent of the world supply of indium. Tellurium is used in cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film solar cells, while indium and gallium are used in the manufacture of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cells. Aside from the inherent scarcity of these metals, the risk of a shortage in these elements in Europe is primarily due to the continent’s dependency on imports, the increasing global demand, the fact that most of the supply comes from only a few geographical areas and geopolitical issues.

Record Efficiency of 18.7% for Flexible CIGS Solar Cells

Renewable Energy News
Scientists at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have further boosted the energy conversion efficiency of flexible solar cells made of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (also known as CIGS) to a new world record of 18.7% – a significant improvement over the previous record of 17.6% achieved by the same team in June 2010.

Fábrica francesa da First Solar adiada

SudOuest.fr
Le groupe américain First Solar, spécialisé dans les panneaux photovoltaïques, et qui doit en principe créer 400 emplois à Blanquefort, décale le démarrage de son projet. Les travaux de construction de son usine, qui devaient démarrer le mois prochain, sont retardés jusqu'à une date non précisée. Cette décision a été prise en raison des changements intervenus récemment dans la politique française en matière de photovoltaïque.

Army evaluating transportable solar-powered tents

www.army.mil
The U.S. Army is evaluating a host of flexible, portable, lightweight solar-powered shades and tent-like technologies. The products are designed to allow expeditionary units to deploy with transferrable, exportable electrical power that can charge batteries, computers and other essential gear without needing fuel or a generator, service officials said. (...) The TEMPER Fly is a roughly 16-by-20-foot tent structure able to generate 800 watts of electricity. A QUADrant is a smaller variant of the TEMPER Fly, able to generate 200 watts of power, and the Power Shades range in size and are capable of generating up to 3 kilowatts of exportable electrical power, Tucker said. The PV integrated military shelter items use a lamination process to combine the PV materials [Flexible PV, amorphous silicon] into the textile substrate, Tucker [a senior engineer in the Shelters Technology, Engineering and Fabrication Directorate at the Natick Soldier Research Design and Engineering Center] explained.

MiaSolé Achieves 15.7% Efficiency with Commercial-Scale CIGS Thin Film Solar Modules

www.miasole.com

[Miasolé] today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) independently confirmed the 15.7% efficiency of its large area production modules (1 square meter in size). This is the highest efficiency demonstrated for commercial size thin-film modules and effectively closes

the gap with polycrystalline silicon module efficiencies. (...) MiaSolé will ship 22MW in 2010.

CIGS: solyndra swaps CEO
Brian Harrison has joined Solyndra as President and CEO. (...) The changes come amid a painful chapter in one of the solar world's more engrossing melodramas. The company, which has created a novel tubular solar panel, has raised more than $1 billion from investors and nabbed hundreds of millions in government loans. President Obama and Steve Chu have spoken at the factory. The company has even nabbed clients like Anheuser-Busch. Nonetheless, the tubular panels cost far more to produce than conventional solar panels, making the likelihood of long-term success a question mark in investors' minds. Solyndra's average sale price is around $3.24 a watt and the company has been selling panels at a loss. Crystalline silicon solar panels sell for $1.95 or less a watt and companies can sell them for a profit.
(...) The VC playbook is rather thin. Provide more money, stop providing money or replace the CEO are the primary actions VCs faced with flailing company performance tend to take. In this case, the chosen course of action is to replace the CEO.

The Rise of CIGS – Finally?
Solar Frontier [formerly Showa Shell, formally Shell, formally Siemens] is building a 900-MW factory in Japan, a manufacturing capacity that could turn the company into the most formidable CIGS competitor. The new factory, its third, would put the company’s total annual production capacity at 980 MW. Solar Frontier expects to start rolling out panels this fall and reach mass production by next spring. (...) Solar Frontier is currently producing panels with 11.5 percent average efficiency, and it expects to hit 14 percent by 2014. (...) In 2009, CIGS companies worldwide collectively shipped about 43 MW of solar panels, which came mostly from Solar Frontier, Global Solar Energy and Honda.

Applied Materials cutting 500 jobs
Applied Materials, the semiconductor equipment giant, said on Wednesday that it will discontinue the SunFab line for thin-film solar panels and cut about 500 workers. (...) CEO Mike Splinter blamed a number of factors for the lack of success in the thin film business that Applied thought several years ago would be quite promising, namely "delays in utility-scale solar adoption, solar panel manufacturers' challenges in obtaining affordable capital, changes and uncertainty in government renewable energy policies, and competitive pressure from crystalline silicon technologies." The company also plans to divest its low-emissivity architectural glass coating products, which is more efficient because it reflects more energy than other glasses. Instead it will continue development of emerging technologies such as "smart" electrochromic glass that can be darkened or lightened electronically.

European Parliament exempts renewables from cadmium ban
The European Parliament has voted to exempt the solar industry and all other renewable technologies from a ban on the use of cadmium in the electronics industry. It is a victory for First Solar, the giant US company that is the biggest user of cadmium telluride in its thin-film panels, although the exclusion will be subject to a Commission review in 2014.

Comment: First Solar must have been worried. Apparently they were even considering moving into CIGS: [From Reuters] First Solar Inc, the world's largest thin-film solar panel producer, has set up a Silicon Valley lab for a thin-film technology [CIGS] with the potential for higher efficiency at a lower cost (...) First Solar acknowledged on Thursday it has a small research and development unit in Silicon Valley but declined to comment further.

EU May Give Solar Companies a Break on Cadmium
Top solar manufacturers are making progress on greening their supply chains and recycling efforts, but a key European Union decision on cadmium could redefine what it means to be good for the environment. The EU's decision on whether to exempt solar makers from regulations on hazardous chemicals, such as cadmium and lead, could come as soon as next month. Its repercussions could be profound, particularly for market leader First Solar, which makes a cadmium-telluride thin-film cell.

o solar como eólico...

Japanese Solar Sail Headed for Venus and Beyond
An ambitious solar sail mission designed by Japan is poised for launch tomorrow could become the first successful mission powered solely by sunlight, but that's not all. The spacecraft is also aimed at Venus and beyond, and could pave the way for a future hybrid space engine. (...) "This will be the world's first solar powered sail craft employing both photon propulsion and thin film solar power generation during its interplanetary cruise," said a JAXA mission website. (...)
Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun)is designed to unfurl its sail during its first stage by taking advantage of its spinning momentum, and then actively deploying the rest of the way during a second stage."The membrane is deployed, and kept flat, by its spinning motion; four masses are attached to the four tips of the membrane in order to facilitate deployment."

Crystalsol to Try to Commercialize CTZSS
Crystalsol, a startup from Estonia, will try to commercially release copper tin zinc sulfur and selenium (CZTSS) solar cells in a few years, says Badegruber, the company's managing director. (...) The company's CZTSS cells can be printed on a flexible substrate. Thus, Crystalsol will aim to get the material incorporated into membrane roofing and other building products.(...) Crystalsol's experimental cells only exhibit around a 6-percent efficiency; the company hopes to get to 11 percent. CIGS companies now produce commercial cells in the 10-percent-plus efficiency range.