Terry Tsao, president of SEMI South East Asia (SEA), presented SEMI’s global activity in the Photovoltaic (PV) industry at Malaysia’s National PV Conference 2008 (NPVC 2008), held on August 14 at Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya. The presentation gave an introduction to SEMI as an industry association and gave an overview of the formation of the PV Group in SEMI to drive activities in the PV industry. SEMI also reported progress in various regions regarding the formation of PV Committees to steer the development of the PV communities and programs. SEMI Singapore is just embarking in a recruitment drive to form the South East Asia Committee. An update on the standards activities in the different regions as also presented to the conference participants.

Terry Tsao, president of SEMI South East Asia, presented SEMI’s global activity in the Photovoltaic (PV) industry at Malaysia’s National PV Conference 2008.

The NPVC 2008 is organized by the Malaysia Building Integrated Photovoltaic (MBIPV) Project of Malaysia Energy Centre (PTM), and is fully sponsored by the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications with support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Global Environment Facility (GEF) and Malaysian PV Industry Association (MPIA). Attracting more than 500 participants, the annual event for the budding PV industry in Malaysia overwhelmed the organizers who originally planned a conference for only 300 people. Speakers at the conference, who came from various organizations that are driving the PV industry, included Dr Benjamin Sovacool, a Research Fellow from the National University of Singapore. He gave a presentation that compared different PV policies that are adopted in various countries in the world— taking a special look at those that worked in the European Market. Gerhard Stryi-Hipp, managing director of the German Solar Industry Association, presented lessons learned in Germany on a Sustainable PV Market and looked at why Malaysia should consider implementing Fit-in-Tariffs (FiT) now for greater consumer adoption of solar energy.

For the first time, three of the top 10 PV manufacturing companies in the world came together on the same stage to present their perspective of the solar market and their development plans in Malaysia. First Solar was represented by: Jos van der Hyden, VP of Business Development for EMEA, Uwe Juergen Bauer, managing director for Q-CELLS Asia Ltd, and Robert Vinje, managing director of Sunpower in Malaysia. Speaking on the solar industry in ASEAN, Christophe Inglin described the efforts by the Singapore government to grow the PV industry there. He is the managing director of Phoenix Solar in Singapore and chairman of the Renewable Energy Committee of the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore.

A day prior to NPVC 2008, MBIPV organized at Roundtable discussion for SEMI, which was attended by over 30 participants from the Malaysian PV Industry. The Roundtable discussion was an opportunity for SEMI to present its PV Group activities as well as to understand the developments underway in Malaysia led by MBIPV and MPIA. An engaging discussion emerged where participants sought to understand the role that SEMI can play in Malaysia, as well as to address some concerns by the industry in the next three to five years.

Further information about MBIPV is available at www.mbipv.net.my and the conference presentations can be downloaded at http://www.mbipv.net.my/past_events.htm. More information about SEMI’s PV Group can be found at www.pvgroup.org.