Solar Cells Info

By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/
la-mew-solar23-2008oct23,0,1453462.story

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced a private-public partnership to bring solar power to 15 California State University campuses and the system’s Long Beach headquarters.  “California is going green and we are doing it first and we are doing it fast,” Schwarzenegger said this week at a news conference at Cal State Dominguez Hills, according to a statement released by his office. “This partnership is a good deal for the state, the planet and our economy — all at no cost to taxpayers.” (more…)

Hong Kong , 25 October 2008
Source: News24.com
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_2415709,00.html

A solar-powered lamp, which is as thin as a magazine cover and sticks onto most surfaces has been developed by a Hong Kong inventor, a media report said.  The lamp won designer Keikko Lee, 26, the gold price in South Korea’s first international design competition held in October, the South China Morning Post said.  Lee said the lamp has electroluminescent material on one side and solar panels and sensors on the other. (more…)

By Matt Nauman, San Diego, October 20, 2008
Source: San Jose Mercury News
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10770837?source=most_emailed

The United States is poised to become the world’s largest user of solar power in the next decade, experts say, thanks in part to Silicon Valley innovation and the country’s vast land area and amount of sunshine.  And that title will bring an unexpected benefit: Manufacturing jobs arriving in the United States rather than being shipped overseas. Solar companies have determined that it makes economic sense to manufacture close to your market, because among other factors it reduces shipping costs. (more…)

The Company’s Most Powerful Solar Panels to Date with Performance Ratings over 90%
Marlboro, MA, Oct 14, 2008
Source: Evergreen Solar Inc, press release/BusinessWire
http://www.evergreensolar.com/app/en/investors/

Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESLR) will introduce its new American-made ES-A Series Solar Panels at its booth #1115 during Solar Power International in San Diego, October 14-16, 2008. This new line of 200, 205 and 210 W solar panels features the most powerful products Evergreen Solar has ever produced. With a -0, +5W power specification, the ES-A Series also provides the best power tolerance currently available in the industry. (more…)

Raises Contractual Backlog to more than 1 Gigawatt
Marlboro, MA, Oct 16, 2008
Source: Evergreen Solar Inc, press release / BusinessWire
http://www.evergreensolar.com/app/en/investors/

Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESLR), a manufacturer of STRING RIBBON(TM) solar power panels with its proprietary, low-cost wafer manufacturing technology, announced it has signed two new long-term sales contracts totaling more than 160 MW. The first is with Mainstream Energy Corporation and AEE Solar, Inc., a leading wholesale distributor in North America; the second contract is with, one of the top-tier general trading companies in Japan.. The combined contracts extend the company’s total contractual backlog to more than 1 GW. Shipments under these contracts will begin in 2009 and continue through 2012. (more…)

Fremont, CA, Oct 23, 2008
Source: Solyndra Inc, press release/BusinessWire
http://www.solyndra.com/News/Press-Release-102308

Solyndra, Inc., a manufacturer of proprietary photovoltaic (PV) systems designed to optimize solar electricity production on commercial rooftops, announced it has signed a new long-term sales contract with solar integrator GeckoLogic GmbH, based in Wetzlar, Germany. The Euro-based contract value equates to approximately $250 million and extends through 2012. The GeckoLogic contract is part of Solyndra’s previously-announced total contractual backlog of approximately $1.2 billion. The solar panels for these contracts will be manufactured at Solyndra’s facilities in Fremont and Milpitas, California. (more…)

Hartford, Conn, 23 October 2008
Source: Associated Press/Forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/10/23/ap5598888.html

China Sunergy Co. Ltd., a solar cell manufacturer based in Nanjing, China, announced Thursday it signed an agreement for a supply of single crystal silicon ingot for the production of solar cells.  Japan’s Hitachi (nyse: HIT – news – people ) High-Technologies Corp. and its affiliate agreed to supply 1,472 tons of silicon ingot through the end of 2011. (more…)

By Julie Steenhuysen, Chicago, Oct 5, 2008
Source: Reuters.com
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE49429H20081005

U.S. researchers have found a way to make efficient silicon-based solar cells that are flexible enough to be rolled around a pencil and transparent enough to be used to tint windows on buildings or cars.  The finding, reported on Sunday in the journal Nature Materials, offers a new way to process conventional silicon by slicing the brittle wafers into ultrathin bits and carefully transferring them onto a flexible surface. (more…)

Solyndra hopes to capture the wasted sunlight falling on roofs by making solar cells into cylinders rather than panels
By David Biello, October 7, 2008
Source: Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cylindrical-solar-cells-give-new-meaning-to-sunroof

There are approximately 30 billion square feet (2.8 billion square meters) of expansive, flat roofs in the U.S., an area large enough to collect the sunlight needed to power 16 million American homes, or replace 38 conventional coal-fired power plants. By covering these roofs with large, flat arrays of cylindrical thin-film solar cells (think massive installations of fluorescent tubes, only absorbing light rather than emitting it), Fremont, Calif.–based Solyndra, Inc., hopes to harness that energy.

“With a cylinder, we are collecting light from all angles, even collecting diffuse light,” says CEO Chris Gronet, who founded the solar cylinder company in 2005 based on an idea he had late one night while pondering less expensive ways to install photovoltaic panels. Because the arrays do not have to be angled or anchored into the roof, he adds, “we have half the installation cost and can install in one third the time.”
(more…)

A novel photovoltaic technology moves into large-scale production.
By Kevin Bullis, MIT Technology Review, October 17, 2008
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21574/

In a significant milestone in the deployment of flexible, printed photovoltaics, Konarka, a solar-cell startup based in Lowell, MA, has opened a commercial-scale factory, with the capacity to produce enough organic solar cells every year to generate one gigawatt of electricity, the equivalent of a large nuclear reactor. (more…)