Silfab - italienischer PV-Player - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

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noch nicht notiert, aber sehr umtriebig:

www.silfab.eu

September 3, 2010

Mississauga, Canada: Silfab Constructs 180 MW Module Assembly Plant

Internationally vertically-integrated solar provider, Silfab Spa (Italy), is realizing in record-time its project to build a 180 MW solar module manufacturing plant in Ontario, Canada, with an investment of 15 million Canadian dollar (first phase). Since officially unveiling its plan last June, the company has registered the new Canadian subsidiary, Silfab Ontario Inc., and proceeded to locate and secure the 100,000+ square foot production facility in Mississauga, Ontario (240 Courtneypark Drive East).

Today, Silfab Ontario also announced a broadening of its business model to accommodate Ontario based PV module OEM manufacturing to share its production capabilities with domestic and international solar companies seeking to enter the Ontario market. According to the company's timeline, Silfab Ontario is on track to start production in early 2011 with a capacity of 60 MW, ramping up to 180 MW by 2012.

Whereas the manufacturing of Silfab own high-efficiency mono and multi-crystalline silicon modules will absorb over half of the plant's capacity, the rest of the production will be devoted to OEM partners who seek to fulfill the fast-growing demand for renewable energy products in Ontario complying with the domestic content requirements set by the Ontario Government. OEM partners will have access to Silfab founding team's 30 years of experience in the photovoltaic modules production and a certified process that guarantees the full compliance with the production criteria set by the Ontario Feed-In-Tariff Law.

Silfab Ontario has already started the negotiations of OEM contracts with several leading companies which will provide their own component materials to build PV modules at the new Mississauga plant which will be distributed under their own brands.

"For Silfab, this is an invaluable opportunity to export our consolidated photovoltaic experience and know-how in a market that has just begun to unfold" commented Silfab SpA's and Silfab Ontario's President and CEO Franco Traverso. "Our decision to dedicate part of our production to OEM supply contracts is meant to address the needs of all those companies that - just like us - welcome Ontario Government's efforts to spearhead the Province's renewable energy industry but are unlikely to commit to the investment on a local manufacturing facility."

The new fully automated manufacturing facility, operated by about 200 Canadian skilled workers (at plant full capacity) and equipped with the most advanced technologies, will be part of Silfab's network of strategic synergies with global partners and shareholders Pan Asia Solar Ltd. (PAS) and Sino-American Silicon Products Inc. (SAS). Thanks to these partnerships, Silfab Ontario will have access to a secure supply chain that not only will guarantee consistent availability of raw material throughout the production period - including high-performing ingots, wafers, and cells - but will also enable the new Canadian company to be one of the few companies to offer competitive products at a secure locked price.

"We are now expecting to install the first production line within the next few months," commented Traverso - early this Fall we will proceed with the training of the first 70 workers with the assistance of our Croatian partner, Solaris d.o.o., a solar module manufacturing company which I founded 10 years ago," added Traverso.

Silfab solar modules will be produced with 60 and 72 high-efficiency mono and multi crystalline cells, with a power up to 300 Wp, suitable for both rooftop and ground-mounted applications. Silfab modules have already received UL and ULC certification by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and have been tested to withstand extreme weather conditions, such as 25 mm hailstones traveling at 83 km/hour, temperatures down to -40°C (-40°F), and wind loading up to 130 km/hour.

Although Silfab Ontario's core business will focus on solar modules manufacturing, the company has also been licensed to assemble and distribute in Canada and the U.S. Italian designed mono-axial sun tracking systems offered via a partnership with ESPE S.p.A. The technology has been proven in over 70 MW of PV plants across Europe and has demonstrated increased solar farms productivity by 25 to 30 percent in comparison to fixed PV systems.

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22 November 2010
Silfab SpA is acquiring 10% of the share capital of Idrofin Srl, an Italian developer of hydropower plants in Eastern Europe with a core business in Romania.

Silfab, which specialises in solar photovoltaics (PV), thereby sees the entry in a relatively low-risk market.

Idrofin, through its controlled company Hidrogest Energia Srl, is currently developing a 23 MW, €60 million network of micro hydropower plants (with less that 10 MW/year) in Romania, expected to produce 76 GWh annually

Idrofin is also developing the Chemp Roscani hydropower plant by the Dobra River basin area which is expected to have a capacity of 6.6 MWp and produce 26.03 GWh per year.

Franco Traverso, Silfab President and CEO, says: "With this initiative we not only do amplify our competence within the renewable energy marketplace, but we also consolidate a strategic partnership with Espe Group – a company I personally have been working with for the past 30 years to develop photovoltaic projects. For Silfab this partnership represents a unique opportunity to access a crucial energy market with a partner that has both solid and strategic technical expertise in hydroelectricity."

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14 June 2011
SILFAB SPA AND ISC KONSTANZ ANNOUNCE A NEW PV BREAKTHROUGH: A LOW-COST/HIGH-EFFICIENCY BACK-CONTACT SOLAR CELL
As a result of the R&D partnership on Interdigitated Back-Contact Cells (IBC) between Silfab SpA (Italy) and ISC Konstanz (Germany), a 19+% energy conversion efficiency has been obtained on monocrystalline silicon large area solar cells using a low cost industrial process, with a potential exceeding 22%.

Padua-Italy/Konstanz-Germany, June 7th 2011 - It's named “ZEBRA”. The new back-contact solar cell with an actual 19+% energy conversion efficiency and a potential exceeding 22%, that uses a low-cost industrial process. This new breakthrough was officially announced today by Silfab SpA (Italy), a leading international vertically-integrated solar provider, and the International Solar Energy Research - ISC Konstanz (Germany), as a result of their joint R&D activities.

The ZEBRA cell concept is based on large area (156 mm x 156 mm) n-type monocrystalline (Cz) silicon wafers and is a back-contact, back-junction cell, without any metallization on the sunny side. This means that, while the efficiency of today’s industrial mainstream monocrystalline cell technology will soon saturate at around 19-20%, Silfab’s innovative ZEBRA technology starts from 19% and will reach efficiencies of over 22% while significantly reducing the production costs per watt peak. ZEBRA solar cells performance starts out where traditional cells end up, opening a new frontier in the photovoltaic industry.

“The combination of high efficiency, large area n-type wafers, as well as a low cost process” - said Franco Traverso, Silfab SpA President and CEO - “leads to a significant reduction of cell and module production costs, and represents a very important step towards Grid-Parity. This is a technologic achievement that is made possible by the combination of the long-term industrial experience of our technical team with the excellence of ISC Konstanz in R&D on photovoltaics, especially n-type silicon solar cell. This is a very important and fruitful partnership, which is bound to last for very long time and give excellent results”.

By the end of 2011, a cell manufacturing Pilot line will be implemented by Silfab SpA, which is also developing an advanced module assembly technology. In fact, the commercialization of new generation modules made by 60 ZEBRA cells and with peak power exceeding 290 W is planned for 2012 under Silfab's 40 years linear warranty terms.

The ZEBRA process sequence is a new and smarter combination of single process steps that are already implemented in mass production by the worldwide PV industry, thus avoiding the need of adopting specific equipments for producing interdigitated back-contact cells (IBC). Today’s industry standard cells manufacturing lines can therefore be utilized to produce super high efficiency cells at a significantly reduced cost per watt. As a consequence of this newly developed know-how, Silfab will also play the role of technology provider to other cells and modules manufacturing companies willing to convert their traditional lines, thus strongly contributing to their competitiveness and profitability.

“It is extremely rewarding for us to be able to work on important research projects and be financially and technically supported by a company with the outstanding expertise of Silfab” - said Dr. Radovan Kopecek, co-founder and director of ISC Konstanz - “We are proud to be able to anticipate and illustrate such results as ours on low-cost IBC cells to the photovoltaic scientific and technical community like we recently did at the “nPV-workshop”, a two-day workshop organized in Konstanz by ISC and other leading institutes in this field such as ECN, Fraunhofer ISE, ISFH”.