On May 8th, 2013, New Energy Technologies Inc. (Columbia, Maryland, U.S.), a developer of see-through solar cells for generating electricity on glass windows, announced that its researchers have achieved faster fabrication time, improved transparency, and a two-fold increase in power conversion efficiency. The company states that researchers have developed a novel, patent-pending method which enables fabrication of the large-scale “SolarWindow” devices, a building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) technology. Read more...

The difficulties that the global solar industry experienced in 2012 were both clear and expected. Continuing excess solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing capacity spurred a collapse in prices across the PV value chain, creating consistently negative margins and negative profitability for upstream PV manufacturers. This led to a large number of bankruptcies, insolvencies and acquisitions, but also trade wars between the United States and China, the EU and China, and between India and everyone else. Read more...

Gerhard Rabensteiner was one of the founding members of ESTIF and since the establishment of this federation in 2002 he acted as Vice-President. He looks back on many years of experience in the field of solar thermal energy as the Managing Director of the Austrian company GREENoneTEC that is now part of KIOTO Clear Energy AG. This holding company was co-founded by the Austrian in 2006. In his interview with Solarserver, the new ESTIF President spoke about the perspectives of the branch, policies for renewable energies and his plans for the future Read more...