Blurred images and hazy landscapes dominate “Beauty in Doubt,” a Ruffin Gallery exhibit featuring the unconventional oil paintings of Tom Burckhardt , who abandons the canvas for cast-plastic backgrounds. Burckhardt’s new work underscores the doubt present in the things we see around us and the things we attempt to construct.
Even in a time when digital photography and modern sculpture tend to eclipse more traditional art forms, for Burckhardt, the evolution of painting has a lot of room for growth . In fact, painting is more important than ever to illuminate the absurd nature of how we live today.
The most immediately striking thing in viewing his work is the proclamation of his paint, which Burckhardt achieves by using bright gradients and bold colors. In certain Burckhardt paintings the effect creates a sense of exaggerated reality. Houses are not green, faces are not red, patterns do not suddenly appear, but maybe, if the viewer squints hard enough or looks long enough, these things might eventually emerge.
In works such as American (2011) and Rakish (2011) , Burckhardt pursues the concept of fragmented reality . The face only half exists , to the point where the viewer often is not sure what Burckhardt is trying to display. The doubt comes back, not to mock the modern notion of painting, but rather to play with it, to display its flexibility.
In addition to their common theme of doubt, Burckhardt’s paintings also use pareidolia. Pareidolia, seen in Rorschach’s inkblot tests, describes the psychological situation in which people perceive vague or random images as significant. In Burckhardt’s pieces, faces appear out of patterns, colors and shapes. An intriguing aspect of these works is this exact paralleling of patterns and colors. By default, our minds attempt to work out some significance in the way these elements are put together. We see faces and houses where objectively there are only green lines and black triangles. Burckhardt has described the process of realizing these images as though “they grow into individuals, as paintings, by growing into individuals as representations of faces.”
Artists have not completely rejected cast-plastic and cardboard, but these types of mixed media are frequently considered to be a lower-class form of art. Certain factions of the artistic world praise such works, but many critics bemoan this alleged “fall” of the artistic form from its historic pedestal. Burckhardt focuses on the middle ground between these two attitudes. Burckhardt has seen the life cycle of painting occur many times over and he seems to show amusement in the face of its repeated death and resurrection. The hazy distortions of Burckhardt’s paintings seem to dismiss the existence of previous works of the more academic artistic canon.
Conceptual quibbling aside, Burckhardt’s interplay of colors and patterns is beautiful in its own right. Notions of doubt and historical ambivalence, however, underlie any sense of simplicity in his pieces. They are by no means immediately attractive, but their meditations on absurdity, doubt and the artificiality of conventional beauty make them fascinating fodder for both thought and sight.
2012年1月30日星期一
2012年1月12日星期四
Presidential Portrait Stolen From Southgate House
A former American president has gone missing from the Southgate House. Owners say someone took off with an original oil painting of Andrew Jackson.
The painting is believed to have been taken sometime between December 15th and 16th. Local 12 News Reporter Rich Jaffe has more on the mystery of the missing man.
The painting is part of a collection of 8 portraits of Presidents who were believed to have visited the Southgate House during the life of it's original owner, Richard Southgate. The paintings were commissioned by the most recent owner Ross Raleigh...and no one can figure out how something so big made it out of there when the place was full of people.
The set of Presidential portraits hung in Juney's Lounge on the first floor of the Southgate House. The missing portrait used to hang in the middle of a wall, above the bar's piano. It's an oil painting of President Andrew Jackson and it's surrounded by an ornate wooden frame. Painted by Kentucky artist Jerry Bond, it's hung there since they were painted in the late 80's early 90's and "We've never had anything happen to the paintings before."
Ross Raleigh commissioned the paintings because the artist was a personal friend and he wanted to share the buildings history with his faithful patrons. The portrait somehow disappeared between 7 pm December 15th and 5 p.m. on December 16th during business hours. Adding to the mystery is the fact that while the club was open there was a bartender in the room, and a security guard at the front door. "We all sat there...how did this happen, how did they get it out...why did they want to do it? Did they particularly want Andrew Jackson as opposed to the other Presidents because out of all of them Abraham Lincoln would be the most desirable to a Presidential painting collector."
Knowing the club was closing, the speculation is someone wanted their own personal piece of memorabilia. But the theft was a double blow to the club owner Ross Raleigh. "We were having to leave the building, he had Jerry paint these specifically for him. Jerry passed away in 2004 so it's not like he can have him paint another one for him so it was very heartbreaking for him."
Raleigh tells me the painting's worth about $3500 but clearly the emotional value of it since it was done by his friend is a lot higher. The owners considered taking the paintings down just before the theft, but they wanted patrons to be able to enjoy them through the last evening. Southgate House closed on New Year's Eve.
The painting is believed to have been taken sometime between December 15th and 16th. Local 12 News Reporter Rich Jaffe has more on the mystery of the missing man.
The painting is part of a collection of 8 portraits of Presidents who were believed to have visited the Southgate House during the life of it's original owner, Richard Southgate. The paintings were commissioned by the most recent owner Ross Raleigh...and no one can figure out how something so big made it out of there when the place was full of people.
The set of Presidential portraits hung in Juney's Lounge on the first floor of the Southgate House. The missing portrait used to hang in the middle of a wall, above the bar's piano. It's an oil painting of President Andrew Jackson and it's surrounded by an ornate wooden frame. Painted by Kentucky artist Jerry Bond, it's hung there since they were painted in the late 80's early 90's and "We've never had anything happen to the paintings before."
Ross Raleigh commissioned the paintings because the artist was a personal friend and he wanted to share the buildings history with his faithful patrons. The portrait somehow disappeared between 7 pm December 15th and 5 p.m. on December 16th during business hours. Adding to the mystery is the fact that while the club was open there was a bartender in the room, and a security guard at the front door. "We all sat there...how did this happen, how did they get it out...why did they want to do it? Did they particularly want Andrew Jackson as opposed to the other Presidents because out of all of them Abraham Lincoln would be the most desirable to a Presidential painting collector."
Knowing the club was closing, the speculation is someone wanted their own personal piece of memorabilia. But the theft was a double blow to the club owner Ross Raleigh. "We were having to leave the building, he had Jerry paint these specifically for him. Jerry passed away in 2004 so it's not like he can have him paint another one for him so it was very heartbreaking for him."
Raleigh tells me the painting's worth about $3500 but clearly the emotional value of it since it was done by his friend is a lot higher. The owners considered taking the paintings down just before the theft, but they wanted patrons to be able to enjoy them through the last evening. Southgate House closed on New Year's Eve.
2012年1月9日星期一
Jimmy’s tribute to KP people through his brushstrokes
The artist says the exhibition is a tribute to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for rendering great sacrifices in the wake of current wave of militancy in Pakistan.
“The exhibition will reflect the courage of people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in their fight against terrorism besides showing they have a desire to live a full life,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial minister for information and culture. The event is jointly organised by the provincial department of information and culture, the department of archaeology and youth affairs and the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar.
Mr Hussain, Jimmy Engineer and UET vice-chancellor Imtiaz Hussain Gilani addressed a joint press conference here on Sunday and explained the spirit behind the event.
The paintings depict themes such as Pakistani architectural composition, international architectural composition, poverty and plight of refugees at the time of Pakistan’s coming into being in 1947.
Paintings titled ‘Sunset’, ‘Hut by the Sea’, ‘Fishermen with boat’, ‘My Palette’, ‘Banyan Tree’, ‘Donkey Cart’, ‘Running Horse’ and many other would be on display to attract visitors.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr Jimmy said he had never organised exhibitions for commercial gains. “I have contributed 70 per cent of the money raised through my previous exhibitions to causes such as for children, human rights etc,” he said.
Mr Gilani said that the event was a joint effort to highlight the cultural history and architecture of the country. He said the event was a tribute to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for showing resilience in the face of militancy.
Minister for information Iftikhar Hussain thanked the artist for dedicating the exhibition to people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who steadfastly supported the government in the fight against terrorists. He said that such cultural events promoted pluralism and were essential to thwart militants’ threats.
The minister said that the government fought militants on different fronts simultaneously in an effort to keep people united, counter militants’ influence, and protect the cultural norms and values.
“They (militants) were taken as heroes,” said the minister, adding “We changed that wrong perception through our media policy that encouraged people to speak against militants on TV and write in newspapers”.
He said the government’s bold policies helped in restoration of cultural activities. “Now there is not a single day when Nishtar Hall goes without a cultural function,” he said. Mr Hussain also renewed the provincial government’s offer to militants for finding a negotiated settlement to the current situation.
The provincial government is not afraid of militants; it endured their threats and fought bravely against them, winning back the area they had taken over, he said.
“Too much bloodshed has taken place in our area and now there must be an end to it,” Mr Hussain said, emphasising negotiations to come out of the current crisis.
He said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and its people had taken a ‘beating’ and it’s time to win back peace so that our children could get education.
“We took the thrashing because we believe in peace and that’s why we think a negotiated settlement is the best option to end the crisis,” Mr Hussain said. He, however, expressed doubts about success of the reported US-Taliban contacts for negotiating peace in Afghanistan.
The minister said that any peace talks without involving Pakistan and Afghanistan would not succeed. “Unless America takes Pakistan and Afghanistan into confidence, negotiations (between US and Taliban) cannot meet success,” he said.
Pakistan or Afghanistan, too, could not succeed in case they pursued talks with Taliban individually without taking all the stakeholders into confidence, he said.
Answering a question about early elections, Mr Hussain said that parliament was not so weak to necessitate early polls and it should complete its term.
“The exhibition will reflect the courage of people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in their fight against terrorism besides showing they have a desire to live a full life,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial minister for information and culture. The event is jointly organised by the provincial department of information and culture, the department of archaeology and youth affairs and the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar.
Mr Hussain, Jimmy Engineer and UET vice-chancellor Imtiaz Hussain Gilani addressed a joint press conference here on Sunday and explained the spirit behind the event.
The paintings depict themes such as Pakistani architectural composition, international architectural composition, poverty and plight of refugees at the time of Pakistan’s coming into being in 1947.
Paintings titled ‘Sunset’, ‘Hut by the Sea’, ‘Fishermen with boat’, ‘My Palette’, ‘Banyan Tree’, ‘Donkey Cart’, ‘Running Horse’ and many other would be on display to attract visitors.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr Jimmy said he had never organised exhibitions for commercial gains. “I have contributed 70 per cent of the money raised through my previous exhibitions to causes such as for children, human rights etc,” he said.
Mr Gilani said that the event was a joint effort to highlight the cultural history and architecture of the country. He said the event was a tribute to the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for showing resilience in the face of militancy.
Minister for information Iftikhar Hussain thanked the artist for dedicating the exhibition to people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who steadfastly supported the government in the fight against terrorists. He said that such cultural events promoted pluralism and were essential to thwart militants’ threats.
The minister said that the government fought militants on different fronts simultaneously in an effort to keep people united, counter militants’ influence, and protect the cultural norms and values.
“They (militants) were taken as heroes,” said the minister, adding “We changed that wrong perception through our media policy that encouraged people to speak against militants on TV and write in newspapers”.
He said the government’s bold policies helped in restoration of cultural activities. “Now there is not a single day when Nishtar Hall goes without a cultural function,” he said. Mr Hussain also renewed the provincial government’s offer to militants for finding a negotiated settlement to the current situation.
The provincial government is not afraid of militants; it endured their threats and fought bravely against them, winning back the area they had taken over, he said.
“Too much bloodshed has taken place in our area and now there must be an end to it,” Mr Hussain said, emphasising negotiations to come out of the current crisis.
He said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and its people had taken a ‘beating’ and it’s time to win back peace so that our children could get education.
“We took the thrashing because we believe in peace and that’s why we think a negotiated settlement is the best option to end the crisis,” Mr Hussain said. He, however, expressed doubts about success of the reported US-Taliban contacts for negotiating peace in Afghanistan.
The minister said that any peace talks without involving Pakistan and Afghanistan would not succeed. “Unless America takes Pakistan and Afghanistan into confidence, negotiations (between US and Taliban) cannot meet success,” he said.
Pakistan or Afghanistan, too, could not succeed in case they pursued talks with Taliban individually without taking all the stakeholders into confidence, he said.
Answering a question about early elections, Mr Hussain said that parliament was not so weak to necessitate early polls and it should complete its term.
2011年10月24日星期一
America' at LACMA
As tinderboxes go, few are more potentially volatile than the politics of race and sex. Mix the two together, and the possibility for explosion rises exponentially.
In Glenn Ligon’s art, expertly surveyed in a traveling exhibition newly arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the mixture is made. An explosion, however, never comes. What arrives instead is something different — something better, more cogent and worthwhile. Like all good iconoclasts, Ligon chisels open a space for contemplation from a place that is too often inaccessible and locked-down.
The Bronx-born artist, 50, began as a painter. Although the show includes sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and even neon signs, painting remains a core activity. Take the beautiful recent neon sculptures in the final room, which play with the word "America," flipping around its letters to show darker sides. Painting's usual support of stretched canvas is replaced by gas-filled and electrified glass tubing, parts of which are painted black to achieve various poetic effects. They're as much paintings as the canvases in the first gallery.
Those grew out of Ligon's youthful dissatisfaction with gestural abstraction. (The show is installed in a loose chronology, beginning around 1985.) A standard trope in postwar American abstraction drew an analogy between a painting and the human body — between the support as skeletal structure for a skin of paint. Ligon sent it spinning.
Mixing oil and enamel, "Untitled (I am a man)" derives from the defiant placards worn in 1968 by striking sanitation workers in segregated Memphis, Tenn. To the general indifference of city leaders, two men, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had been crushed in a malfunctioning garbage truck. Their mangled bodies gave physical heft to protesters' large signs: "I AM A MAN." The existential outcry was held aloft on sticks or attached to the marchers' chests.
Ligon's painting features identical typeface painted on a white ground. Look closely, though, and the white surface is layered over a black skin of under-paint. The surface is smudged, worn, cracked -- evidence of use, as in those disruptive weeks in Memphis, but also a sign of tattered purity.
The artist, black and gay, painted it in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan had launched his first term's campaign with a notorious states' rights speech delivered in Philadelphia, Miss., site of a famous civil rights era triple-murder. Once in office, he remained silent about AIDS until the epidemic had ravaged the gay community, leaving more than 20,000 dead.
A wry and poignant Ligon drawing (executed with Michael Duffy) from 2000 masquerades as a millennial condition report on that earlier, intentionally "damaged" painting. Identifying every crack, spot and stain on its surface, he reports on a condition much larger than his art's.
Take the recent Arab Spring, where signs were spotted in Libya declaring “Ana Rajul” — Arabic for "I am a man." Ligon's painted 1988 sign, midway between past and the present, retains the capacity to jolt.
Ligon's fusion of art, language and the body soon expanded. Using black oil stick and stencils, recalling Jasper Johns' technique, he painted on wood doors covered in white gesso. The format subtly scales the painting to a viewer's body. In one, the word "passing" is repeated nearly 400 times, legibly across the top but clogging the stencil to become steadily more clotted and indecipherable as it cascades down the surface.
Passing — through doors, between rooms or, metaphorically, from life to death — is smudged with racial and sexual overtones, as in passing as white or straight to survive. A physical roughness in these works eventually gives way to sensuous elegance, especially in the 1990s, when Ligon began to mix coal dust into ink. The tactile surface gains a subtle, light-reflective sparkle, echoing Andy Warhol's use of diamond dust in paintings. The painting's body luxuriates in its own skin, gorgeous and scarred.
An essential pivot comes in the second gallery, where Ligon's "Notes on the Margin of the Black Book" is installed across two adjoining walls. He separately framed 91 erotic photographs of black males cut from Robert Mapplethorpe's 1988 "Black Book," installing them in two horizontal rows. Between them are two more rows of printed snippets of text, 78 comments on sexuality, race, AIDS, art and the politically inflamed controversy over Mapplethorpe's work launched by then-Texas Congressman Dick Armey.
Some, like twisted quotes from the late ambassador and art collector Walter Annenberg and New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer, make your jaw drop, partly because of the speakers' social and cultural power. Others, ranging from celebrated author James Baldwin to anonymous bar patrons, turn your head around in more intellectually expansive ways.
Ligon's piece, a sensation when shown at the 1993 Whitney Biennial, remains powerful today. Then, it erupted in the immediate aftermath of Patrick Buchanan's "culture war" battle cry at the Republican National Convention; now, coded racial animus and homophobia still course through presidential contests.
Ligon adroitly ruptures hardened positions. Note that the number of photographs (91) doesn't match the number of short texts (78). We're used to reading texts as descriptive photo-captions, but that can't happen here; the texts and photos don't match up.
Instead, these words and images slip and slide, the friction between them sending sparks and emitting light. The binary of words and pictures is banished -- along with black/white, gay/straight, naked/nude, liberal/conservative, art/porn, innocent/obscene. Human desires aren't so easily described. This is political art of the most thoughtful, least didactic kind, rewarding the extended viewing it requires with a shot of deep humanity.
The exhibition, with 79 works, has been trimmed from the 104 in its debut last spring at New York's Whitney Museum, where it was organized. But it's beautifully installed, giving a thorough accounting of an important artist at mid-career.
In Glenn Ligon’s art, expertly surveyed in a traveling exhibition newly arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the mixture is made. An explosion, however, never comes. What arrives instead is something different — something better, more cogent and worthwhile. Like all good iconoclasts, Ligon chisels open a space for contemplation from a place that is too often inaccessible and locked-down.
The Bronx-born artist, 50, began as a painter. Although the show includes sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and even neon signs, painting remains a core activity. Take the beautiful recent neon sculptures in the final room, which play with the word "America," flipping around its letters to show darker sides. Painting's usual support of stretched canvas is replaced by gas-filled and electrified glass tubing, parts of which are painted black to achieve various poetic effects. They're as much paintings as the canvases in the first gallery.
Those grew out of Ligon's youthful dissatisfaction with gestural abstraction. (The show is installed in a loose chronology, beginning around 1985.) A standard trope in postwar American abstraction drew an analogy between a painting and the human body — between the support as skeletal structure for a skin of paint. Ligon sent it spinning.
Mixing oil and enamel, "Untitled (I am a man)" derives from the defiant placards worn in 1968 by striking sanitation workers in segregated Memphis, Tenn. To the general indifference of city leaders, two men, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, had been crushed in a malfunctioning garbage truck. Their mangled bodies gave physical heft to protesters' large signs: "I AM A MAN." The existential outcry was held aloft on sticks or attached to the marchers' chests.
Ligon's painting features identical typeface painted on a white ground. Look closely, though, and the white surface is layered over a black skin of under-paint. The surface is smudged, worn, cracked -- evidence of use, as in those disruptive weeks in Memphis, but also a sign of tattered purity.
The artist, black and gay, painted it in the final full year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan had launched his first term's campaign with a notorious states' rights speech delivered in Philadelphia, Miss., site of a famous civil rights era triple-murder. Once in office, he remained silent about AIDS until the epidemic had ravaged the gay community, leaving more than 20,000 dead.
A wry and poignant Ligon drawing (executed with Michael Duffy) from 2000 masquerades as a millennial condition report on that earlier, intentionally "damaged" painting. Identifying every crack, spot and stain on its surface, he reports on a condition much larger than his art's.
Take the recent Arab Spring, where signs were spotted in Libya declaring “Ana Rajul” — Arabic for "I am a man." Ligon's painted 1988 sign, midway between past and the present, retains the capacity to jolt.
Ligon's fusion of art, language and the body soon expanded. Using black oil stick and stencils, recalling Jasper Johns' technique, he painted on wood doors covered in white gesso. The format subtly scales the painting to a viewer's body. In one, the word "passing" is repeated nearly 400 times, legibly across the top but clogging the stencil to become steadily more clotted and indecipherable as it cascades down the surface.
Passing — through doors, between rooms or, metaphorically, from life to death — is smudged with racial and sexual overtones, as in passing as white or straight to survive. A physical roughness in these works eventually gives way to sensuous elegance, especially in the 1990s, when Ligon began to mix coal dust into ink. The tactile surface gains a subtle, light-reflective sparkle, echoing Andy Warhol's use of diamond dust in paintings. The painting's body luxuriates in its own skin, gorgeous and scarred.
An essential pivot comes in the second gallery, where Ligon's "Notes on the Margin of the Black Book" is installed across two adjoining walls. He separately framed 91 erotic photographs of black males cut from Robert Mapplethorpe's 1988 "Black Book," installing them in two horizontal rows. Between them are two more rows of printed snippets of text, 78 comments on sexuality, race, AIDS, art and the politically inflamed controversy over Mapplethorpe's work launched by then-Texas Congressman Dick Armey.
Some, like twisted quotes from the late ambassador and art collector Walter Annenberg and New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer, make your jaw drop, partly because of the speakers' social and cultural power. Others, ranging from celebrated author James Baldwin to anonymous bar patrons, turn your head around in more intellectually expansive ways.
Ligon's piece, a sensation when shown at the 1993 Whitney Biennial, remains powerful today. Then, it erupted in the immediate aftermath of Patrick Buchanan's "culture war" battle cry at the Republican National Convention; now, coded racial animus and homophobia still course through presidential contests.
Ligon adroitly ruptures hardened positions. Note that the number of photographs (91) doesn't match the number of short texts (78). We're used to reading texts as descriptive photo-captions, but that can't happen here; the texts and photos don't match up.
Instead, these words and images slip and slide, the friction between them sending sparks and emitting light. The binary of words and pictures is banished -- along with black/white, gay/straight, naked/nude, liberal/conservative, art/porn, innocent/obscene. Human desires aren't so easily described. This is political art of the most thoughtful, least didactic kind, rewarding the extended viewing it requires with a shot of deep humanity.
The exhibition, with 79 works, has been trimmed from the 104 in its debut last spring at New York's Whitney Museum, where it was organized. But it's beautifully installed, giving a thorough accounting of an important artist at mid-career.
2011年6月14日星期二
Solar energy market opens new opportunities for cooling solutions, says NS Micro Motor
The surging oil price has drawn much attention to the development of renewable energies, in particular, solar energy. According to Solarbuzz, worldwide solar photovoltaic (PV) market installations reached a record high of 18.2GW in 2010, representing a 139% growth on year. Growth will continue in 2011 when the market of related manufacturing equipment is expected to climb 41% from a year earlier to US$15.2 billion, said the market research firm.
TrendForce's statistics also suggests that the global solar cell production capacity is estimated at 20-25GW in 2011, and demand will continue to grow at 20-25% per year.
Digitimes recently had a chance to talk to Leon Wang, senior supervisor of Marketing Center for NS Micro Motor Technology, to discuss how the rising demand for solar energy worldwide could generate new growth opportunities for his company. Specializing in the manufacture of computer fans and blowers, NS Micro Motor has expanded its product lineup specifically designed for use in PV inverters and uninterrupted power systems (UPS), and has grown its client portfolio to include Motech Industries and other major solar cell companies.
The following is an excerpt of the conversation.
Cooling solutions for solar applications
NS Micro Motor has a complete portfolio of fan modules targeted at solar inverters and UPS. Similar to cooling solutions used for other different applications, those designed specifically for parts and components used in solar-powered devices require a certain degree of performance and stability. But the latter segment should also meet some special requirements such as the ability to resist weather of all kinds.
As solar power systems must be installed outdoors to receive direct sunlight, parts and components used to build the installations will require a higher level of weather resistance than those used for other applications. Different countries around the world have varying climate and weather conditions. For instance, weather patterns in Europe and the Middle East are very different.
Furthermore, in many countries, the difference between day and night time temperatures could be huge. For example, the desert regions of the Middle East have wide diurnal temperature ranges. Average temperatures are around 40 degrees Celsius during the day, but fall to minus 10 degrees Celsius at night time. Accordingly, components and parts used in solar installations may even comply with stringent military level specifications for temperature and humidity, waterproofing and dust resistance.
In addition, PV system parts and components have to be certified in accordance with different standards for electrical equipment around the world. Products exported to the US must meet the IP laboratory standards while those to Europe are required to be VDE-approved. NS Micro Motor's cooling modules for solar applications all conform to both standards, joining Japan's Sanyo Electric, and Taiwan-based Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry and Delta Electronics.
TrendForce's statistics also suggests that the global solar cell production capacity is estimated at 20-25GW in 2011, and demand will continue to grow at 20-25% per year.
Digitimes recently had a chance to talk to Leon Wang, senior supervisor of Marketing Center for NS Micro Motor Technology, to discuss how the rising demand for solar energy worldwide could generate new growth opportunities for his company. Specializing in the manufacture of computer fans and blowers, NS Micro Motor has expanded its product lineup specifically designed for use in PV inverters and uninterrupted power systems (UPS), and has grown its client portfolio to include Motech Industries and other major solar cell companies.
The following is an excerpt of the conversation.
Cooling solutions for solar applications
NS Micro Motor has a complete portfolio of fan modules targeted at solar inverters and UPS. Similar to cooling solutions used for other different applications, those designed specifically for parts and components used in solar-powered devices require a certain degree of performance and stability. But the latter segment should also meet some special requirements such as the ability to resist weather of all kinds.
As solar power systems must be installed outdoors to receive direct sunlight, parts and components used to build the installations will require a higher level of weather resistance than those used for other applications. Different countries around the world have varying climate and weather conditions. For instance, weather patterns in Europe and the Middle East are very different.
Furthermore, in many countries, the difference between day and night time temperatures could be huge. For example, the desert regions of the Middle East have wide diurnal temperature ranges. Average temperatures are around 40 degrees Celsius during the day, but fall to minus 10 degrees Celsius at night time. Accordingly, components and parts used in solar installations may even comply with stringent military level specifications for temperature and humidity, waterproofing and dust resistance.
In addition, PV system parts and components have to be certified in accordance with different standards for electrical equipment around the world. Products exported to the US must meet the IP laboratory standards while those to Europe are required to be VDE-approved. NS Micro Motor's cooling modules for solar applications all conform to both standards, joining Japan's Sanyo Electric, and Taiwan-based Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry and Delta Electronics.
2011年4月14日星期四
Enphase to launch road show
PETALUMA – Solar microinverters maker Enphase Energy is launching a 24-city North American roadshow tour to provide a sneak peek of its third generation microinverter system. The Enphase Sneak Preview Roadshow will begin with a kick off event in Petaluma on April 18, 2011, and the customized truck and trailer will then embark on a 60-day tour across the U.S. and Canada.
“One of the best ways for installers to understand the Enphase difference is to experience it firsthand,” said Paul Nahi, Enphase CEO. “This roadshow will let us share our latest product vision with the people who build their success on high-quality, high efficiency solar systems.”
Solar, HVAC, electrical and other building professionals, as well as solar enthusiasts are the tour’s targets.
Each city’s event will showcase a mock Enphase installation featuring the soon-to-be-released M215 microinverter and new advanced cabling scheme, which makes installation even faster than previous generations.
Attendees will experience Enphase’s newly redesigned installation process and receive free hands-on training with the new cabling and termination systems. Free food, contests and giveaways will happen throughout the day’s event.
“One of the best ways for installers to understand the Enphase difference is to experience it firsthand,” said Paul Nahi, Enphase CEO. “This roadshow will let us share our latest product vision with the people who build their success on high-quality, high efficiency solar systems.”
Solar, HVAC, electrical and other building professionals, as well as solar enthusiasts are the tour’s targets.
Each city’s event will showcase a mock Enphase installation featuring the soon-to-be-released M215 microinverter and new advanced cabling scheme, which makes installation even faster than previous generations.
Attendees will experience Enphase’s newly redesigned installation process and receive free hands-on training with the new cabling and termination systems. Free food, contests and giveaways will happen throughout the day’s event.
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