Magazine Archive 2011

Burma: SunEnergy Power International or SunEPI as it is known sought to bring energy to communities that are in need worldwide. The non profit public benefit company’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Walt Ratterman saw renewable energy sources as the solution using the bottom-up approach. One of the countries, among more than 30, that saw changes to its communities was Burma. Walt’s daughter Briana Ratterman tells pv magazine more about powering people in the remotest areas with sun energy.

Dear readers, What a fast-paced media world: although the nuclear drama in Fukushima continues, just a few weeks later the death of Osama bin Laden and the arrest of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn have pushed this topic out of the top news. But where do things stand in terms of the political aftershock? Were the […]

Module prices: With sales stagnating, most module manufacturers are achieving lower profit margins.

Germany: After months of standstill prices are declining on the German photovoltaics market. However, investors and installers require further price discounts in order not to endanger the fledgling recovery.

Process control: Important tools to reduce the balance of system costs in PV manufacturing are the use of advanced optical defect inspection systems and surface metrology systems, in combination with a comprehensive process control methodology, explains Pieter Vandewalle of KLA-Tencor Corporation.

Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics: Silicon PV is set to continue to dominate the solar cell manufacturing industry for the next ten years. It will hold that position due to its ability to eke out continued conversion efficiency improvements and cost reduction.

Polysilicon production: The Siemens process has been the forerunning technology in the polysilicon production world for the last years. Even with the advent of fluid-bed reactors and vapor-to-liquid deposition, the Siemens process remains the unrivalled popular method. Thus, it was with great interest that pv magazine toured the Schmid Silicon Technology (SST) pilot plant in Schwarze Pumpe, in the east of Germany. SST has their own method; one apparently ready to challenge the rest of the techniques.

Russia: The natural disaster that happened in Japan on 11 March that caused a series of serious reactions at the Fukushima nuclear power plants influenced the nuclear energy industry and politics in many countries all over the world. But apparently, not in Russia.