
The Chip Shots blog channels the observations of Fabtech's and PV-Tech/Photovoltaic International's Senior Contributing Editor--USA, Tom Cheyney, a 20-year veteran of semiconductor, advanced micro/nanoelectronics, and solar manufacturing trade journalism. For 15 years, Tom was editor in chief of MICRO (the original home of Chip Shots) until it ceased publication in July 2006. Tom calls Los Angeles home.
View MICRO Magazine archive.
23 July 2008
Although the Solar World 1 photovoltaic-powered car driven by the
University of Bochum (Germany) team finished a very respectable third
in the just-completed Dallas-to-Calgary
North American Solar Challenge race,
the company itself has the number-one position in terms of vertically
integrated crystalline silicon-based solar manufacturing on the
continent.
Read more >>
22 July 2008
One of my regrets from last week's Semicon West/Intersolar North America event was not being able to go on a winery tour.
What does a press junket to wine country have to do with chipmaking or photovoltaic manufacturing, you might ask?
Cline Cellars,
located in the Sonoma region north of San Francisco, is trying to go
100% solar for its electricity needs, and a recently installed Advanced
Energy 333-kW Solaron grid-tie inverter is helping the organic
viticulturists in their quest for sustainability and carbon footprint
elimination.
Read more >>
Several times since early May, when
Chip Shots carried the inside scoop
that First Solar had been awarded the bid for the first installation in
Southern California Edison's 250-MW, $875-million five-year project to
install photovoltaics modules on a couple of square miles of commercial
rooftops in the region, I had tried without success to get the Edison
people to confirm my information.
Read more >>
21 July 2008
As last week's Semicon West/Intersolar North America colocated
extravaganza wore on, several people asked me why I wasn't blogging
every day--or several times daily--during the events. Although there
were moments when I did experience blogger's withdrawal, I came to San
Francisco with the intent of information-gathering (the data dump) and
network-building (the shmooze), not chasing story after story down and
trying to match my peers in a meaningless race to see who could file
more copy or shoot more video interviews.
Read more >>
21 July 2008
What may be the largest copper indium gallium (di)selenide--based
photovoltaic-module field in the US will be sending electricity within
a few months to the manufacturing plant of the company that made the
flexible CIGS "stringer" cells powering the array.
Read more >>
15 July 2008
The materials revolution in the semiconductor industry since the turn
of the century has been well documented, and SEMI's just-released
midyear forecast numbers underscore the economic realities of this
megatrend. It also doesn't hurt that the solar materials market,
especially in the polysilicon sandbox, will soon absorb a profound
growth spurt.
Read more >>
14 July 2008
For many of those attending the colocated Semicon West and Intersolar
North America trade shows this week in San Francisco, one of the most
important events in the solar industry is taking place on the other
side of the country in Washington, DC. The US Senate is again
discussing and likely voting on whether or not to extend the 30% solar
energy investment tax credit (ITC)--which expires at the end of
2008--for another eight years.
Read more >>
10 July 2008
Two of the leading semiconductor industry market research groups have
issued new reports, and the numbers are going in opposite directions.
But a certain dollar amount from the dissimilar forecasts shows up on
both.
Read more >>
09 July 2008
The news that the US Display Consortium (USDC) has fully embraced the
emerging flexible and printed electronics technologies and changed its
name to the
FlexTech Alliance came
as no surprise. As head honcho Mike Ciesinski said in a Webcast earlier
today, "the transition had been under way for a long time....it's not
much of a shift for us."
Read more >>
Few pieces of photovoltaic manufacturing equipment have nicknames as endearing as
DayStar Technologies'
Big Baby deposition megasystem. But don't let the cute sobriquet
distract you from a central truth about the copper indium gallium
(di)selenide (CIGS) start-up's plight: if the oversize, multichamber
production-development system doesn't measure up and perform as
expected, DayStar has no future as a volume PV manufacturer. By the
tenor of CEO Stephan DeLuca's comments during Tuesday's midyear update
conference call, Big Baby has made its parents proud of late.
Read more >>