Solar wafer maker Sino-America Silicon Products Inc (SAS, 中美晶) yesterday said it signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei Technologies Co (華為) to buy solar inverters made by the Chinese firm for its solar power plants.
The deal is part of the company’s efforts to improve its position in the supply chain.
SAS is to help distribute Huawei’s solar inverters outfitted with smart solar grid software, which allows solar power plant operators to improve efficiency and to remotely monitor the operation of their plants via smartphones.
SAS has been engaged in solar power industry via its subsidiaries such as GlobalWafers Co Ltd (環球晶圓).
Last summer, SAS established a new company, SAS Sunrise Inc, joining domestic companies to offer better-return solar power plants to minimize operation risks.
SAS expects the company’s first solar power plant, located in the Philippines, to begin commercial operation in the second quarter of this year. The plant is expected to have an installed capacity of 50 megawatts.
The company is also seeking to strike new deals with potential partners to build solar power plants around the world, including Taiwan, SAS said.
SAS plans to spend more than NT$3 billion (US$88.65 million) on manufacturing equipment and investments on solar power plants this year.
Sino-American chairman Lu Ming-kuang (盧明光) told investors last week that global solar installation market would likely grow 10 percent year-on-year to 65 gigawatts this year.
The growth is mainly driven by rising demand from the US, China and emerging markets, Lu said.
Early this month, SAS reported a record high revenue of NT$28.28 billion for last year with its solar business growing 9 percent annually.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained