Intersolar lights up San Francisco
Intersolar lights up San Francisco
What a difference a year can make. Interso- the Intercontinental Hotel, next door to two suppliers in each category before
lar North America started as an embryonic the convention center. These conferences approaching them for distribution rights
show occupying half of the third floor in were organized by a mixture of media in the US. The range includes, Orient
the Moscone Center’s West Hall only one groups and trade organizations. metallization equipment and a range of
year ago. It was jointly sponsored by Solar On the show floor there was no sealants, pastes and junction boxes. [video
Promotions GmbH and SEMI and was co- shortage of innovation. Here is just a available]
located with the vastly superior SEMICON snapshot: Dow Corning introduced a new
West exhibition, which has been a well- Satcom have the majority market share PV6100 encapsulant material that the
established fixture in the San Francsican in the large industrial, three-phase inverter company claims offers better UV resistance
calendar for many years. field. Unlike the wave of companies and durability, extending the life of the PV
Fast forward twelve months and it’s all introducing micro inverters, Dr Leo module. The new encapsulant is also more
changed. SEMICON West has downsized Casey described a different approach to transparent and provides greater efficiency
by one third and Intersolar has grown by segmenting, monitoring and controlling than film based products. The liquid
over three times to occupy all three floors power from field grid arrays. The new encapsulant is designed to be used in an in-
of the Moscone West Hall, allowing the Solstice inverter is a micro converter and line configuration and reduces production
organizers to segment the show better, with was developed in partnership with Syqor. time as it has a fast flow-out and curing
installers on the first floor and suppliers of The system takes multiple DC feeds from time. Dow Corning claim the new process
manufacturing equipment and materials the field, then converts them into a single, is less labor intensive and can produce one
on the upper floors alongside some large three-phase output to the grid. This allows module every two minutes. [video available]
panel manufacturers. The increase in size each channel to be isolated in the event of SolFocus is the world’s biggest
was also reflected by the huge increase in a ground fault on any of the stringers. manufacturer of concentrated
visitor traffic. In the run-up to the show Christopher Associates made their photovoltaics (CPV). It is the newest
pre-registrations were standing at 17,000. debut into the US solar market with a technology to appear at the solar table
These numbers were well exceeded on the range of competitively-priced Chinese and has a potential of 1 GB in the United
day. equipment and materials. The company States by 2010. [video available]
Running in parallel with the Intersolar researched the China market and Schott Solar CSP opened a multi-
exhibition was a multi-track conference in identified the number one and number million dollar factory in Albuquerque in
20 – Global Solar Technology – July/August 2009
www.globalsolartechnology.com
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