The U.S. market isn’t just attractive to solar energy equipment makers from China, it also is drawing project developers from the country. GCL Solar Energy, owned by a Chinese silicon wafer maker, has lined up over $100 million from Wells Fargo. Read more »
Here are three strategies by First Solar for 2011: keeping its solar panel prices low to encourage its customers to open new markets, use its project development business to offset any drop in solar panel sales, and build new factories like mad. Read more »
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has become a favorite in the solar business lately, approving six solar farms in this month alone, including a 1,000MW project (the world’s largest) in California. If it seems like he’s racing against the clock to OK these projects, well, he is. Read more »
BrightSource Energy and French power giant Alstom have formed a partnership aimed at building solar-thermal power plants in a ring around the Mediterranean. In terms of geography, if not scale, the plan echoes the scheme of the Desertec Initiative, the mega-giant of solar-thermal projects. Read more »
American solar companies say China doesn’t play fair, and that makes it difficult to compete at home and abroad. Here is our 4-step attack plan for what companies can do to get ready for their own fight. Read more »
This morning the industry darling announced that it will boost capacity to a whopping 2.7 GW by 2012, by building two new factories, one in the U.S. and one in Vietnam. That’s double its current annual production of 1.4 GW. Read more »
GE is gunning for First Solar’s turf with a new line of thin-film solar panels, saying it hopes to grow its solar business to match its $6 billion-a-year wind power dominance. Read more »
Mobile video chat application Tango is touting 1 million downloads in its first 10 days. But the app, which lets users video chat with each other across both iOS and Android mobile devices, faces some competition from a new Yahoo Messenger app that allows video calling. Read more »
Inverter maker Power-One has bought venture-backed Fat Spaniel Technologies, adding to a list of renewable energy acquisitions this year. The deal is necessary for Fat Spaniel which has endured a tough market. Read more »
Nielsen is adding its voice to the chorus of research firms confirming the ascension of Android. Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform with 32 percent of purchases, followed by the iPhone and RIM. Read more »
After some intense lobbying by solar energy advocates, White House is making room for solar. In a blog post, Energy Secretary Steve Chu said solar panels and a solar water heater system will rise from the White House roof by the end of the Spring. Read more »
I’ve used Safari as my default browser since 2008, but lately I’ve decided to give Google Chrome a shot at becoming my new standby. I made the switch owing to Chrome’s reported performance advantages. Would they prove convincing enough to make the change permanent? Read more »
The federal Bureau of Land Management will be stamping its final approval on a series of giant solar energy projects in California over the next two months, marking 2010 as the year when the state allows its desert to bloom with mirrors to produce electricity. Read more »
Why develop your own project pipelines when you can just buy them? That seems to be a strategy among large solar electric equipment manufacturers such as Sharp, which announced Tuesday its plan to buy Recurrent Energy for about $305 million in cash. Read more »
When Walmart decides to invest in emerging green technologies it offers considerable validation. That’s certainly the intention behind Walmart’s announcement that it will pay for solar electricity from installations that use thin film solar panels from MiaSole and First Solar and are installed by SolarCity. Read more »
Media mogul Ted Turner says if he were to start over now as an entrepreneur, he would work in clean energy. Turner, who’s been investing in solar for the past few years, made the remarks at Google Zeitgeist this week. Read more »
SunEdison said Friday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with a provincial government in South Korea to install 400 megawatts of solar panels, a sizable project considering the country’s market shrank dramatically following a cut in incentives. Read more »
Can solar module producer Oerlikon inject new enthusiasm into amorphous silicon thin film technology, which until now has struggled to compete in cost and efficiency? The Swiss company hopes to do so with the launch Tuesday of a new line of factory equipment. Read more »
After years of talking about flexible, light-weight solar thin film material that can drape over roofs, manufacturers are finally starting to deliver. SoloPower is announcing on Tuesday that its first flexible solar panel has gotten UL certification, which is required for installation in many U.S. regions. Read more »
Picking winners and losers is always a dicey exercise, but Lux Research took that plunge and issued a report this week, which points to likely revenue winners and IPO candidates over the coming year. The names that popped out include Amonix, Enphase Energy and Abound Solar. Read more »
Global Solar on Tuesday unveiled its new flexible solar panel that can be integrated into roofing membranes. The idea is that buildings and roofs can be built with the solar materials weaved right into them, lowering the cost and the time of the solar installation. Read more »
Looks like bad news for First Solar. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the thin film solar PV leader may not have actually secured that 2-gigawatt solar farm planned for China’s desert, which it announced back in September of 2009. Read more »
In the second quarter of 2010, greentech startups scored record venture capital and increased spending despite a weak economy. Solar power retained its lead in greentech venture financing, while global investment for clean energy asset financing fell. China, meanwhile, underscored its rising might in the greentech industry, raising billions of dollars in green energy financing. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Today on the Net: About 300 million Chinese residents tune into video on the web, Adap.tv added multiple new publishers as customers of its ad platform and cable profits could be boosted by higher affiliate fees due to TV Everywhere services. Read more »
Here’s the big risk for utilities trying to meet California’s renewable portfolio standard, which calls for utilities to deliver 20 percent of their electricity from clean power by the end of 2010 and 33 percent by 2020: The clean power projects sometimes fall through. Read more »
Thin film startup MiaSole was once the posterchild of the over-hype of the CIGS solar world. Now its ramping up production, planning a new factory, developing next-gen solar shingles, and looking to hit a cost of fifty cents per watt for solar manufacturing. Read more »
Solar panels tend to be like Christmas tree lights: if one panel stops working, the whole string is affected. But startup eIQ Energy has a system that connecta solar panels in parallel instead of in a series, and the innovation is starting to gain some traction. Read more »
Online distribution site Blip.tv is aiming to engage with the local web series scene by opening an office in Los Angeles and hiring Epic Fu co-creator Steve Woolf to work directly with creators interested in using the Blip platform. Read more »
First Solar’s U.S. utility solar domination plans continue: this morning the thin film solar darling announced that it plans to acquire NextLight, which owns 1,100 MW worth of solar projects in the Southwest, for $285 million. Read more »
First Solar, the thin-film solar giant, has just linked up with the mega-giant of all solar projects: the Desertec Industrial Initiative. The Arizona-based company announced this morning that it has become an “associate partner” in the ambitious project, which by 2050 aims to supply 15 percent […] Read more »
