img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/assets/logos//assets/logos/footers/first-conferences.jpg" / Ahead of the First Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Summit India, CSP Today catches up with Anoop Mathur from Terrafore, who will be speaking at the Summit.

On Wednesday this week, Panasonic announced its intentions to purchase remaining shares of Sanyo Electric Co and Panasonic Electric Works (PEW). Panasonic already had a 50% stake in Sanyo as of last year. Sanyo is a big player in the solar market and producer of lithium-ion batteries.

The solar PV development company Recurrent Energy has been making some big project announcements lately. The developer said yesterday that it had raised $18 million in debt for a 5-MW PV system in San Francisco.

The cylindrical CIGS thin-film manufacturer Solyndra just signed a power purchase agreement with the utility Southern California Edison for 16-MW of projects.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/30/1332-top-five-electric-vehicle-developments.jpg" /

The research and consulting firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reports that subsidies for fossil energies are far outweighing those for renewables. While many governments are putting support behind clean energy, the figures show that renewables are still far behind, reports BNEF.

The U.S. Department of Energy Announced earlier this month that it would set aside more than $100 million to create an "Energy Innovation Hub" to encourage innovation around producing fuels directly from sunlight.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/29/1332-concentrating-solar-power-builds-up-heat.jpg" / If you're wondering where the Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is heading from here, crane your neck and look upward. Forecasts show industry growth climbing steeply from 2010.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/assets/logos//assets/logos/footers/8285.jpg" / SolarEdge Technologies, a provider of end-to-end Distributed Solar Power Harvesting and monitoring solutions, is expanding its activity in Greece, announcing a partnership with Enolia Solar Systems SA, a leading Greek company active in the development of PV projects, trading of PV solar equipment and design and implementation of rooftop applications in the rapidly developing PV markets of Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/29/2081-sma-expands-north-american-utility-scale-pv-inverter-line.jpg" / SMA America LLC, the U.S.-based subsidiary of global solar technology leader SMA Solar Technology AG, has expanded its U.S. line of utility products with the Sunny Central High Efficiency (HE) line of solar inverters. The new 500 and 630 kilowatt inverters provide integrators, project developers and EPCs with a utility-scale 1000VDC solution that features the industry's best efficiency in the medium voltage interconnection category.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/29/1332-audio-interview-eiq-energy-partners-with-shoales-to-reduce-bos-costs.jpg" / Michael Lamb tells editor Debra Vogler how the company's vBoost technology and its partnership announcement with Shoales will address reduced balance-of-system (BoS) costs.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/29/1332-audio-interview-the-future-of-thin-film-solar-cell-manufacturing-chris-eberspacher.jpg" / Eberspacher summarizes sessions on thin-film photovoltaics and PV fab management from Intersolar NA 2010.

What happens when the U.S. government awards DuPont, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Bosch, and 3M $1.6 million to develop a longer-lasting, less expensive way to store clean energy? We will soon find out.

According to EUPD Research, an organization that is studying the UK PV market, an important aspect of the feed-in tariff (FIT) regulation could stymie growth of the solar market in the UK.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/23/1332-new-york-s-solar-thermal-plans.jpg" / By unveiling a solar heating and cooling programme that could create 25,000 new green jobs, generate US$2.6 billion in revenue and see 2 GW of new solar thermal capacity installed in the state over the next decade, New York has revealed its ambition to become America’s national leader in solar heating and cooling.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/28/8923-securing-land-to-develop-csp-plants-in-the-us--private-state-or-federal.jpg" / One of the first and critical challenges for solar developers is locating and securing the most suitable site that meets all the technical, logistic budgetary requirements. There are only 3 options available private, state or federal with each one having separate challenges.

The German company Sulfurcell, a producer of Copper Indium Selenide (CIS) thin-film modules, signed agreements this week to supply companies in China and India with 16 megawatts (MW) of product.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released details of a newly drafted energy bill yesterday. The bill is more notable for what's not in it, than what is in it.

Sandia National Laboratories and SunPower Corp. announced that they formalized a research agreement in which they will focus on integrating large-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems into the grid.

Xtreme Power, a provider of Dynamic Power Resources (DPRs) for utility-scale power management and energy storage systems, announced the close of a $29.5 million financing round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, The Dow Chemical Company through its Venture Capital group and existing investor SAIL Venture Partners.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/28/1332-new-scanning-probe-microscopy-techniques-for-analyzing-organic-photovoltaic-materials-and-devices.jpg" / Rajiv GiridharagopaL, Guozheng Shao, David S. Ginger, University of Washington; and Chris Groves, Durham University,discuss the experimental challenges and opportunities associated with two different AFM-based optoelectronic scanning probe techniques, photoconductive AFM (pcAFM) and time-resolved electrostatic force microscopy (trEFM), that have been used help understand how morphology impacts organic photovoltaic (OPV) performance.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/28/1158-solar-energy-international-meets-industry-needs-with-curriculum-update.jpg" / For 20 years, SEI has been at the forefront of solar PV training.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/28/1158-nicaraguan-communities-embrace-solar-and-wind.jpg" /

Electric car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA) announced that its Tesla Roadster is now approved for Australian roadways and available for purchase.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/1332-cpv-in-australia-s-red-centre.jpg" / Located in the arid desert region in the heart of Australia, the small town of Alice Springs, with a population of 28,000 is normally best known as the jump off point for one of Australia's best known natural icons, Uluru (the geological formation formerly known as Ayers Rock). Located about 500 km to the south west (considered a short distance in the vast reaches of the Northern Territory Outback) Uluru attracts some 400,000 visitors per year. Over the last few years though, Alice Springs has been attracting attention for another reason, its development of world-leading expertise in its use of one of the region's other natural and abundant resources – solar energy.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/27/9723-comment-visions-launches-online-community.jpg" / Comment:Visions recently revealed a new and improved 'Contributor Community', allowing policy-makers, industry-leaders and experts in energy and environment to interact and network with each other online.

Clean Energy Works, a diverse coalition of more than 80 grassroots organizations representing more than 12 million Americans emailed a statement signed by more than 360 groups bemoaning the Senate's failure to address a clean energy and climate policy. It follows.

This week 18 U.S. utility executives from Hawaii to Maine and all points in between are in Japan to see firsthand how the Japanese have worked to create a successful utility-scale solar landscape. The Solar Electric Power Association is leading the group.

A number of companies are shipping product into the booming Italian market before the country's incentives are reduced next year. The latest announced deal was from the vertically-integrated Chinese manufacturer Solarfun Power Holdings, which is selling 12 MW of modules into Italy.

With the PV inverter market growing so rapidly, product shortages are becoming increasingly acute around the world, especially in Europe. A new report from IMS Research highlights the numbers behind that growth: the PV inverter market shipped 8.3 GW of devices in 2009, totaling $2.8 billion in revenue.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/27/7121-city-of-corona-turns-bus-shelter-into-a-mini-power-plant.jpg" / City of Corona today unveiled to the public its newly installed solar bus shelter providing comfort to its public transportation customers while being capable of generating clean, renewable energy through a roof ornamented with highly efficient solar panels. The installation marked the first grid-connected solar system for bus shelters.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/27/9235-the-climate-bill-and-home-solar-energy.jpg" /

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/23/1332-solarbuzz-us-solar-market-to-grow-tenfold-by-2014.jpg" / Despite a challenging domestic economic environment, the U.S. solar market grew 36% in 2009, according to the United States PV Market 2010 from Solarbuzz. This growth was, however, not nearly as strong as the region's 62% growth in 2008. On a global scale, the country was ranked the third largest solar photovoltaic market, behind Germany and Italy.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/1332-is-the-u-s-ready-to-enact-a-fit.jpg" / U.S. state and local efforts to create feed-in tariff (FIT) programs will not work as well as those in Europe unless regulators adopt the key principles that have made FIT programs so successful on the Continent, analysts say.

Many people ask me, "which CIGS company is going to emerge as winner in the race towards high efficiency thin film PV's? To provide an enlightened perspective to the question, some historical perspectives are needed.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/1332-producing-high-performance-thin-film-silicon-pv-panels.jpg" / Thin-film silicon solar panels are produced by forming an amorphous silicon (a-Si) film on a glass substrate. Similar to crystalline solar cells, or modules, the a-Si, photovoltaic panels are made from silicon, however, the amount of silicon required is very small: that is, one hundredth or less the amount of the crystalline photovoltaic cells (made from bulk silicon), since only a thin layer of silicon is deposited on a 1.1m x 1.4m glass substrate. For this reason, a-Si thin-film photovoltaic modules have received wide-spread attention as an alternative to crystalline silicon, for various mainstream PV applications.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/1332-textured-zno-enables-high-efficiency-silicon-solar-modules.jpg" / One of the most critical processes for high-efficiency amorphous-microcrystalline thin film silicon solar cells involves the front-side transparent conductive oxide (TCO). This very thin layer scatters the incoming light which increases the fraction of light absorbed in the layer. To date, most production a-Si thin film solar cell designs, both single- and tandem-junction, have relied on commercially available tin oxide (SnO) deposited on glass. We describe a study that shows how improving light-trapping properties with ZnO films enables higher efficiency in large-size thin film solar modules. The experiment used magnetron-sputtered and wet chemically etched zinc oxide (ZnO) films for the front contact. The films were deposited using an Applied ATON physical vapor deposition (PVD) type tool that can be integrated into Applied Materials' a-Si/µc-Si SunFab module production line.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/9738-open-to-comments-finding-rooftops-to-host-cleantech-projects.jpg" /

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/8923-balance-of-plant-consideration-moves-to-top-of-csp-agenda.jpg" / CSP Today is delighted to announce the launch of its CSP Yield Optimization Conference (Denver, October 27-28),

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/assets/logos//assets/logos/footers/4561_4561_logo.jpg" / 3TIER,® the global leader in renewable energy information services, today announced that its complete suite of solar prospecting and assessment products is now available throughout India. The products are based on 3TIER's proprietary solar dataset, which is the most advanced and accurate solar dataset that exists for India. The products enable project developers to quantify the long-term availability and variability of solar resources with or without observational data.

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/9741-delta-energy-systems-at-intersolar-north-america--premiere-for-the-new-solvia-solar-inverters.jpg" / The year 2010 is the year of SOLIVIA, the new brand of Delta´s solar inverters. SOLIVIA stands for "Solar inverters for versatile and intelligent applications".

img hspace="10" vspace="5" align="left" width="110" src="http://www.renewableenergyworld.com//assets/images/story/2010/7/26/9741-delta-energy-systems-germany-gmbh-is-developing-the-new-solivia-25-m-micro-inverter-for-the-north-american-and-europe.jpg" / A 250W SOLIVIA micro inverter designed by Delta will be on display at the Intersolar NA tradeshow in San Francisco. This is the second generation micro inverter, since in 2002 Delta Energy Systems shipped the world's first solar micro inverter into the Belgium market.