Industry news
Title
Industry news
Polysilicon prices heading for a fall
second quarter of 2009 since many solar ed diagnostic system will enable solar cell
The global supply of polysilicon, which is
module developers holds on to money and module manufacturers to significantly
a primary building block of photovoltaic
anticipating price declines in yearend 2008. reduce the cost and improve the reliability
cells that harvest electricity from sunlight,
www.chinasunergy.com of their PV modules.
will outstrip demand in 2009, resulting a
Upon successful demonstration of
drop in the price of polysilicon, say analysts
Suniva begins production of high the crack detection technology, it will be
and market researcher iSuppli Corp. in El
efficiency solar cells at Norcross engineered into Spire’s production cell test,
Segundo, California. The decline in pricing
facility
cell string, and assembly equipment. www.
and expected oversupply of polysilicon will
Less than 12 months after initial planning,
spirecorp.com.
benefit photovoltaic wafer makers that buy
Suniva Inc. began production of solar
the raw material. However, the pure solar
cells on its new 32MWp line in Norcross, After 45% profit drop, Applied
wafer market will become a less attractive
Georgia. The company simultaneously an- Materials to cut 12% of staff
business in the future, iSuppli analysts say.
nounced plans to install a second produc- Applied Materials Inc., a chip company
Fundamental imbalances in the solar sup-
tion line in 2009 with twice the manufac- that has invested heavily in its emerging
ply chain will cause demand for polysilicon
turing capacity of its first, bringing total solar business, announced plans to cut 12
to grow by 34 percent in 2009, while the
production capacity of the Norcross facility percent of its workforce to reduce costs
supply of the material doubles, analysts say.
to 96MWp by the middle of 2009. and weather the economic downturn. The
www.isuppli.com
The newly completed 32MW line Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported
produces Suniva’s ARTisunTM solar cells, declines in its fourth fiscal quarter and
Chinese producer expects solar
which are then delivered to module manu- 2008 fiscal year sales, underscoring the
energy market to rebound in early
facturers to be assembled into some of the tough times ahead for all of its markets. Ap-
2009
industry’s most efficient solar modules. plied plans to slash 1,800 positions in its
The solar energy industry will receive
Suniva currently sells solar cells produced offices worldwide during fiscal 2009. The
moderate and no long-lasting impacts from
at the Norcross facility under existing cus- reduction will generate an annual savings
global financial market, said Wang Run-
tomer contracts with companies including of $400 million, Applied said. The com-
sheng, chief executive officer of China’s
Solon AG and Titan Energy Systems LTD., pany will reduce the headcounts through
major solar cell producer China Sunergy
totaling more than US $1 billion. attrition, layoffs and other programs.
Co., Ltd. As the main driving force of solar
www.suniva.com www.amat.com
photovoltaic (PV) industry, governmental
subsidy policies haven’t been removed or
Spire to develop microcrack Glass solar cell concentrators
delayed due to the financial turmoil, said
detection technique PV cells, wafers eliminate need to track sun
Wang, citing recent solar-favoring legislative
Spire received a contract from the United The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
adjustment in France.
States Department of Energy (DOE) to de- (MIT), USA, has developed a light concen-
Wang forecast that solar PV market
velop a microcrack detection technique for tration system for solar cells can use display
would witness up-turn in the first or
silicon solar cells and wafers. The automat- glass and even window glass as sunlight
concentrators. It also makes it possible to
reduce the cost of solar cell systems to a
tenth or less. Only the light guide has been
fabricated at present, and measurements of
performance when mated to an actual solar
cell are scheduled for the future. Estimates
of performance changes to variation in
light guide size are based on simulation
results. www.mit.edu
LG Electronics and Conergy end
joint venture negotiations
Due to the worldwide financial crisis and
changes in strategic direction, the Korean
company LG Electronics (LG) has in-
formed Hamburg-based Conergy AG that it
currently does not wish to proceed with the
acquisition of a majority stake in Conergy’s
solar module production in Frankfurt
(Oder) through a joint venture. LG will
however continue to review other options
4 – Global Solar Technology – November/December 2008 www.globalsolartechnology.com
issue_2.1.indd 4 2/22/09 9:39:44 PM
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