This Week in Solar

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Hey, solar Fools. Even in this Labor Day-shortened week, it took some labor to keep up with the flurry of activity in the photovoltaics space. Let's take a look at some of the highlights.

Solar equipment maker GT Solar (Nasdaq: SOLR) cut a few deals this week -- first with DC Chemical and then later with LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK). The company has had a rough time since its recent IPO. On just the second day of trading, LDK placed a pretty big silicon ingot furnace order with one of GT's competitors. A slew of shareholder lawsuits began flying shortly thereafter. This week's deals should go some way toward reassuring investors that GT remains a force in furnaces, reactors, and other solar production equipment.

Speaking of DC Chemical, the polysilicon provider signed an agreement with Suntech Power (NYSE: STP) worth $750 million. As a large chemical company that's been around for several decades, DC is probably one of the most credible recent entrants into polysilicon production.

Another of Suntech's polysilicon partners, Hoku Scientific (Nasdaq: HOKU), has quite a bit more to prove, but even this U.S.-based firm is oversubscribed for its forecasted output. The company dropped a pair of partners yesterday, including Sanyo, in favor of a few other eager entrants willing to pony up more prepayments. This funding will narrow Hoku's financing gap to $73 million -- a little less than 20% of the total estimated capital cost of its polysilicon plant.

On the technology side of things, there were a few notable announcements this week. One of Q-Cells' joint ventures just shipped its first CIGS (copper indium gallium (di)selenide) thin-film modules. While it's been a bit slow out of the gate, CIGS is one of the few technologies that poses a credible challenge to First Solar's (Nasdaq: FSLR) thin-film dominance. Meanwhile, Sharp apparently unveiled a technology that may shave 50% off the cost of solar wafers. I'll return to this story when I have more information, as it's a potentially important one for fans of LDK or ReneSola (NYSE: SOL).