Don’t know if anyone caught it, but SunPower’s PowerLight subsidiary completed construction of Mungyeong SP Solar Mountain, a 2.2-megawatt solar electric power plant in Mungyeong, Korea – comprised of 10,500 panels and covering an area of approximately 43,000 square meters.

SP Energy, Korea's largest private solar plant operator, owns the plant and is selling the electricity it generates to the Korea Power Exchange.

The company also said that Mungyeong SP Solar Mountain is the second major solar power plant designed and deployed by PowerLight in Korea in recent months. In November 2006, a one-megawatt project in Gwangju, Korea, was officially dedicated.

In other solar power activities this week, EMCORE Corp. said its photovoltaic division has attained a solar conversion efficiency of 31 percent for a new class of advanced multi-junction solar cells optimized for space applications, and that it has reached 37 percent peak conversion efficiency on its terrestrial concentrating solar cell products currently in volume production.

Also, Valere Power was awarded a small business innovation research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to develop what it says is a management system that will “dramatically” improve the efficiency of solar power systems for better power extraction.