Wave Energy is being developed for a long time almost since the 1700s through a variety of devices and convertors.Wave Devices are being used mainly to generate electricity and for water desalination.Wave Energy has a myriad of systems being developed as the technology is still immature.Wave energy generation is still a research field and there are as many designs as companies active in this field.Note as a technology matures,a single technology system gain ascendance as others are discarded along Darwinian lines.For example solar technology which is in the phase before maturity has majority of its energy convertors of the mainstream polycrstalline solar panels.Wind Energy which is further along the learning curve has most of its energy being generated from large vertical axis wind turbines.Wave Energy on the other hand has not come around a single dominant type of device.A number of devices are being developed to harness wave energy efficienty and at low cost.Wave Energy faces problems of being exposed to strong weather elements therefore wave energy designs are progressing along the lines of devices which require low maintainance and which are able to withstand weather better through devices with lower number of moving parts.
As part of the World Health Organization’s “Health Care for All by 2000,” the Indian government is working to improve the quality and accessibility of medical care. India aims to increase the number of hospital beds, increase new hospital construction, and acquire advanced technologies, substantially.Domestic production consists primarily of low technology products, & the demand for high technology devices is met predominantly by imports. At present, the three leading exporters of medical devices to India are the United States, Japan, and Germany. India still relies on foreign involvement for high-technology and highly specialized areas such as equipment for plastic surgery, cancer diagnosis and medical imaging.
JA Solar is the biggest solar cell producer in the world with more than 2000 MW of silicon cell capacity.The company has one of the lowest costs in processing of solar cells from solar wafers.The company is primarily a supplier of solar cells to most solar panel producers in Europe and Asia.However the sharp fall in solar panel prices in 2011 has resulted in most of the European companies shutting shop which has meant that JA Solar has faced a large loss in customer orders for its solar cells.Unlike its peer Trina and Yingli Solar,JA Solar does not have a good brand name or distribution of solar panels.It is more of a upstream supplier of solar products to solar comapnies rather than a end distributor of solar panels.JA Solar has diversified into making solar panels of its own and in partnership with other companies.Having a strong presence in the end market has become essential to survive in the cutthroad solar market.
NB Solar Sun Earth or SunEarth Solar Panels is the Brand of Solar Panels sold by Chinese Ningbo based manufacturer of monocrystalline and polycrystalline solar modules Sun-Earth.It has 4 facilities for silicon (3000 tons polysilicon plant), wafers (40 MW ), solar components and solar system production.The company has been in the solar industry for 45 years which would make it one of the oldest solar companies in the world.However it seems to have been left far behind in terms of capacity with only 350 MW in 2009.Sun-Earth is a major supplier of solar systems to telecom towers in China and portable solar systems to Africa.It claims to have supplied to utility grade systems in Spain as well.However it does not have much of a brand name compared to listed Chinese solar companies like Trina Solar,Yingli or Suntech.It is a Tier 2 Supplier of Solar Panels like CEEG Solar and BYD Solar Panels.Therefore its solar panel prices would be much lower than that of the Tier 1 solar panel suppliers.In these times of oversupply of solar panels when even the bigger producers like Canadian Solar are operating at razon thin margins,companies like Sun-Earth would be facing survivability questions.So you have to do your due diligence before buying solar panels from small solar panel companies as they might not exist to serve the 25 year performance warranty on their solar panels.
Solar Power Plants in the USA are proliferating with the falling cost of solar energy and the increase in government support through the Treasury Grant subsidy.Thousands of Solar Jobs are being created in the USA as solar installers increase their workforce to cope with the rapid surge in demand.The crash in prices of solar panels has led to increase in demand for solar system installations.Also the state Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) laws which make it mandatory for utilities to source a portion of their power from green energy sources has boosted the use of solar energy.Besides rooftop solar systems,large solar power plants are being built in the USA comprising of millions of solar panels with the help of DOE loan guarantees and 1603 Grants.Not only solar photovoltaic systems,but also solar thermal power plants which use solar heat to generate power are being built.Though some of the solar thermal power plants are now being converted to solar panel power farms due to their lower costs,still some solar thermal companies like Brightsource Energy continue to build massive solar farms.The list of solar power plants in the US is a constantly moving target but here is a list of the major solar power plants in the USA as well as some of the upcoming large solar power plants.Note this list is subjective as you can’t have a strict rule of solar system size to classify it a solar power plant.Also the huge number of solar installations makes it almost impossible to construct an exhaustive list of solar power plants.Here I am writing about the big solar power developers and their plans on developing large solar power plants.There are a number of smaller solar developers which I have not written about here.
Solar Panels have recently become a point of trade friction between USA and China as a massive oversupply of solar panels has resulted in the prices of solar panels dropping by almost 50% in one year.This has caused great distress amongst solar panel manufacturers in the USA particularly the high cost ones which have been forced to close.Falling prices of solar panels are great news for customers but bad news for the producers of these solar panels.Now US and European companies are selling their solar panels advertising their “made in USA” credentials.This is to help them sell the solar panels which cost more but according to them have better quality and appeal to the patriotism of the Americans.Note the 2009 Economic Stimulus which promoted renewable energy had in fact “Buy American” provisions as well as the defense law passed in 2011.This means that a small part of the solar market is reserved for US Solar Panel Manufacturers who are being besieged by the low cost Chinese solar panel producers around the world.In fact Photovoltaic Module player Solarworld (which is German) is spearheading an effort to pass anti-dumping duties against the import of Chinese based panels.So which companies have “Made in USA” label.The surprising thing is that many of the solar companies are in fact foreign mostly European and Japanese though there are a native US companies as well.Note the most successful US Solar Companies First Solar and Sunpower (now Total) have always had the majority of their production outside the US in Asia.