The turning of the new year didn’t make the solar industry any easier for solar manufacturers. Power electronics maker, Satcon Technology, announced Wednesday that it’s laying off 35 percent of its workers and shutting down its factory in Canada. Read More »
Cleantech
Companies continue to bow out of the solar market in 2011. This week it’s BP Solar, which is shutting down, as well as Solar Mlillennium, which has filed for insolvency. Last week it was German solar panel company Solon, which also filed for insolvency. Read More »
Solar thermal company Stirling Energy Systems has filed for bankruptcy, according to Renewable Energy World. Stirling Energy Systems developed solar concentrators based on stirling engines, which use the sun’s heat to produce electricity, and planned to build projects to sell the power to utilities. Read More »
While an uproar has arisen over the loan guarantees for solar from the U.S. Department of Energy (namely the one for Solyndra), another federal agency has also been making hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans and loan guarantees to support the U.S. solar industry.… Read More »
A little known fact about Boeing: it’s got more solar patents than anyone else in the U.S., (14 solar thermal patents since 2002 as of January, according to a law firm.) So sooner or later the defense contractor would want to commercialize ‘em. Read More »
As solar thermal firms like eSolar have started flipping switches on their first projects in U.S. deserts, I’ve been eagerly waiting the stirling engine solar folks to officially enter the game. Looks like we’re getting one project at the end of this month:
This week, Stirling Energy Systems submitted an application for certification (AFC) to California’s regulatory body, the California Energy Commission (CEC), for a planned 850 MW solar power plant, dubbed “Solar One,” in the Mojave Desert. This is the second large solar application the… Read More »
