Power Management Experts Seek To Cooperate On Solar Energy

The earth receives more energy from the sun in just one hour than the world uses in a whole year. But although that energy holds tremendous potential for creating inexpensive, environmentally clean electricity, that potential is far from being realized on a large scale. So three companies with expertise in power management technologies have joined forces to explore strategic cooperation opportunities in areas such as increasing solar cell production and developing photovoltaic inverter and power supply applications. The three companies are Delta Electronics Inc. (Taiwan), which provides switching power supplies; its majority-owned subsidiary DelSolar Co. Ltd. (Taiwan), a solar cell manufacturer; and STMicroelectronics NV, which supplies semiconductor solutions for power conversion. Solar power accounted for only 0.024% of the total amount of electricity produced globally in 2004. By 2010, that figure may grow by a factor of 10, to 0.25% of the world’s electricity, according to the Daiwa Institute of Research.