Solar

California’s Solaria Corporation, which specializes in solar photovoltaic modules for tracking applications, has announced new operations in China to meet what it calls “demand for high-efficiency, large-scale solar projects.”

Hyundai Motor Company, South Korea’s largest automaker, is to install the nation’s largest rooftop PV power plant at its manufacturing factory in the city of Asan, on the northern outskirts of Seoul.

India intends to level the playing field between solar photovoltaic (PV) power modules made from crystalline silicon and those using various thin-film technologies during the country’s next grid-connected solar PV power capacity auction due to start at the end of this month. During the first phase of the country’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) – under which solar PV and solar thermal were each allocated 500-MW of capacity – there was a mandate that 60 per cent of equipment by value was to be locally sourced for solar PV projects and 30 percent for solar thermal projects.

Norway’s Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) has announced it will deliver 72-MW of its high efficiency solar panels for the construction of six solar farms in Thailand’s Nakhon Pathom and Suphan Buri provinces.

The European Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, is expected to tell his fellow EU commissioners on Wednesday that Brussels should levy punitive import duties on solar panels made in China, according to Reuters.

The European Commission on Saturday announced it had initiated an anti-subsidy investigation into imports of solar glass from China acting on a compliant by the association EU ProSun Glass.

Draft guidelines from Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) show India’s central government is prepared to offer subsidies of up to 30 percent on new solar plants, totaling 750-MW of capacity, to be built under Phase-II, Batch-1 of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM). This is the first time such extensive direct grants, made under a “Viability Gap Funding” (VGF) scheme, have been offered to India’s solar power industry. The government, which has previously used the funding model to build roads, railways and coal-fired power plants, is seeking to boost renewable-energy output to curb chronic blackouts that shave an estimated 1.2 percentage points off annual economic growth.

In addition to being hit with the same industry woes that all global solar manufacturers have had to contend with, including over-supply and collapsing prices, China’s LDK Solar is now watching sales tumble as customers desert the troubled wafer and module supplier. Even as the company struggles to avoid the fate of its now bankrupt rival Suntech, LDK yesterday reported net loss of USD517 million for the quarter ending 31 December 2012. But what be even more telling is that its USD135.9 million in revenues for the final quarter of 2012 are only slightly half the USD230 million it predicted when it released its third quarter results at the end of last year.

India's grid-connected non-hydro renewable energy capacity, mainly solar and wind, has reached 27-GW, while the country’s total grid-connected power generation capacity is about 215-GW, according to a top Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) official.