Solar Industry on a Roller Coaster Polysilicon spot prices have dipped below $40 per kg. Yesterday, summarizing insights gained from last week’s Solar Power International (SPI) conference, Mercom Capital Group forecast a “Poly Price Collapse”. Crisis? Or not? While poly production may not yet be in crisis, red ink in downstream PV module production has become a critical industry issue. Last week, Mehdi Hosseini of Susquehanna...

UMG Purification. Photo Courtesy of Calisolar. Polysilicon prices are on the rise again in the solar PV industry, and metallurgically purified polysilicon (UMG) is back in the news. This time, however, UMG is generating interest for strategic market access rather than supply diversification. Download PDF (right-click, save-as) PHOTON Magazine: UMG U-Turn Originally Published in PHOTON International, November 2010. Provided with...

The controversial Domestic Content Requirements provisions in Ontario’s Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) generated more Solar PV industry activity and intrigue this past week. New announcements from a variety of industry players have added to the controversy generated by the Japanese Government’s recent unfair trade practices complaint to the WTO.   Two separate press releases provided further illumination on a spectrum of issues related to...

In manufacturing, viability hinges on production yield. In energy devices, viability hinges on conversion efficiency.   Less is less   The notion that higher conversion efficiency is better than lower efficiency is intuitive. With higher efficiency, more is produced from the same resource. Higher efficiency does have higher inherent value. What is often counter-intuitive, however, is that low-price scenarios can produce dramatic...