China Power Investment Corp has won bids for seven of the thirteen solar concession projects, China Securities Journal reported, without saying where it got the information.

GCL-Poly, in which China's sovereign wealth fund holds a stake, signed an agreement with DelSolar to supply 664MW of wafers to the Taiwanese solar-cell maker.

Rather than install racking systems to hold heavy glass-covered solar panels, the company's PowerFlex BIPV modules can be adhered onto a roof or built right into roofing materials. The modules are quicker to installer, lighter, and don't require any penetrations into the roof, according to the company.

Suntech Power China's largest maker of solar panels, said on Thursday that it has signed a deal to develop solar plants in South Africa with up to 100 megawatts in capacity.

Net revenues were $370.8 million, an increase of 10.1% sequentially and 147.2% year-over-year.

Applied Materials has forecast quarterly results that beat Wall Street estimates, with demand for its chip-making gear holding up despite fears of weakening technology spending. But the company warned that sales of solar and energy equipment would slide 10-20% this quarter.

Unlike traditional silicon-based solar cells, the film is composed of metal nanoparticles embedded in a transparent composite matrix, and operates on a different principle. EnSol is now developing the product with help from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy.

LDK Solar is planning to build a solar manufacturing facility with 1 gigawatt of solar cell and 500 megawatts of solar module capacity. The manufacturing facility is expected to begin production in the second quarter of 2011, backed by US$368 million in financing for up to three years from a Chinese lender.

Just six weeks ago, it didn't even have a factory. Now it has orders from customers to take 20 megawatts worth of panels.

LDK Solar reported Tuesday that it earned net income of US$45 million, or 36 cents per American Depositary Share, in the quarter that ended June 30. That compared with a net loss of US$216.9 million, or US2.03 per ADS, when it took a hefty writedown on plummeting inventory value in the year-ago quarter.

SunPower reported their second quarter results today and here is a rundown of the highlights for the solar panel manufacturer and solar power provider.

Kyocera is ramping up its annual production to 600MW this year - an increase of 50% over the previous year - to meet growing demand in countries such as Japan, US, Germany, France and Italy, the company says.

Samsung started a 30MW solar cell production line for research and development last September and will incrementally increase capacity to 130MW next year, company spokesman James Chung said today.

It took firefighters from Boise about a half an hour to put out the fire, which broke out in a building that helps support the company's development of solar panels.

A new solar energy capture technology is able to generate electricity from light and heat at the same time, producing double the efficiency of existing solar panels.

[A] team of researchers at MIT has found that silicon, the most widely used material for computer chips and solar cells, can exhibit "retrograde melting" when it contains high concentrations of certain metals dissolved in it. This could make it possible to produce some silicon-based devices, such as solar cells, using a less pure, and therefore less expensive, grade of silicon that would be purified during the manufacturing process.

MEMC, which makes wafers for computer chips and silicon for solar cells, said it earned US$13.8 million, or 6 cents per share, up from US$1.4 million, or a penny per share, during the same period last year.

Panasonic has placed a 820 billion yen (US$9.5 billion) bet on the future of green energy by offering to buy out minority shareholders in two subsidiaries specialising in rechargeable batteries, solar cells and other environmental technology.

Japan's Sharp is investing almost 4 billion yen (US$46 million) at a plant in Britain to double production of solar cell modules to meet growing demand across Europe.

The new e-book reader has a 15.24 cm display panel and a 10 cm square solar panel; impressively, the solar cell measures just 0.7mm in thickness, thus obtaining the relatively light weight of 20 grams.

One particular type of fly eye has just the right shape that could be perfect for manufacturing efficient solar cells.

Applied Materials has announced it will stop new sales of its "turnkey" SunFab thin-film solar manufacturing line and concentrate on silicon solar and LED lighting. The restructuring of its Energy and Environmental Solutions business will lead to the elimination of 400-500 positions and a third-quarter charge between US$375-425 million.

Germany's move comes as Italy plans a 30% cut in its FIT for next year. That could force Italian developers to build as fast as possible in the 2H10, much like German developers did in 1H. The lower drop in FIT gives manufacturers time to make a transition to markets such as the United States and Canada, which have the possibility of being larger than Europe, based on combined electricity demand and land available for development.

The state of California is suing federal mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking implementation of a program that helps property owners to install solar energy systems, it was announced today at a San Diego news conference

Applied Materials said demand for semiconductor and solar-panel manufacturing equipment in Europe is growing rapidly, a sign the region's debt crisis isn't crimping spending.

Bryan Li, the company's CFO, says Yingli decided to become a World Cup sponsor because of the increasingly competitive market for solar companies. Yingli felt it could "not just compete with our global competition by cost. We also need to compete with them by the brand."

SoloPower claims that its modules boast a 10.5% to 11% efficiency (compared to ECD at somewhere in the 6.5 percent range) and the flexible units can be affixed to the roof with an adhesive or mounted on a lightweight non-penetrating rack.

Solar-power industry representatives said the bill passed by the lower house of parliament in Berlin today will increase pressure on companies such as Q-Cells SE and Solarworld AG as they face competition from producers in China.

Retroactively from July 1, subsidies for roof-mounted solar-electricity facilities will be cut by 13% instead of the originally planned 16% cut. Subsides to providers generating solar power on open-field sites--such as agricultural land--will be cut by 12% instead of 15%, while the initial cut for sites that have been converted from former military and industrial use would be 8% instead of 11%.

British householders who have installed the expensive technology are unable to start generating electricity because of a shortage of "inverters".