Solar energy is gaining fans in homeowners who aren't just tree huggers - they're penny pinchers.

A $1.2 billion write-down by solar equipment maker REC on Tuesday highlighted the pain being inflicted by aggressive Chinese competition and may herald wider consolidation in the sector and flattening of prices.

"Demand growth is likely to be weaker than usual in the third quarter, as customers are delaying purchases due to slow global economic growth," Hynix said.

The company's revenue outlook for the current quarter was also higher than what Wall Street anticipated.

Prices of LED lamps and luminaires have almost halved in the past 6-9 months, thanks to a fall in global prices of their chips and local production by Philips.

General Electric Co. has provided capital, alongside other investors, to Nuventix, the creator of an LED cooling technology for energy-efficient lighting.

Solar panels on building roofs don't just provide clean energy they also cool the building, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Suppliers of photovoltaic modules have suffered from gross margins falling by more than 25 percent this year. That's according to IMS Research, which said there's a tough price war in the industry with supplier not able to cut costs as much as prices, so eroding the margins.

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) will, for the first time, bring together industry leaders and the financial community for a Photovoltaic Investors Day on September 6.

Renewable Energy Corporation, one of the world's biggest makers of solar power equipment, said the worst was over for the solar industry after a sharp drop in prices this year resulted in heavy second-quarter losses for the Norwegian group.

At the Semicon West trade show, ESI announced an ascribing system that maximizes LED light output, a packaging system that utilizes a laser to drill vias in the die, and a tester than can handle 48,000 LEDs per hour.

China-based solar equipment maker LDK Solar Co Ltd said on Monday the chairman of its audit committee had resigned, and its shares fell to their lowest level in a year.

Silicon Valley is one of the world's cleantech big-idea centers but so far it's been Chinese manufacturers -- not valley entrepreneurs -- who are dominating the global solar industry. The Chinese are winning by driving down production costs through incremental innovation, said Zhengrong Shi, founder and CEO of China-based Suntech Power, the world's largest producer of solar panels.

The Italian utility network authority has published a list of the photovoltaic installations that qualify for governmental solar subsidies this year. However, the prerequisite is that they are connected to the grid in time.

Samsung LED Co Ltd said it had filed a complaint with the US fair trade commission to ban imports of LED products from Siemens' light bulb unit Osram and affiliates Osram Opto Semiconductors and Osram Sylvania Inc.

While estimates of how many jobs are being created in "green industries" are never easy, a report by nonprofit research institution Brookings has found that 2.7 million workers are now employed in industries that also benefit the environment, such as photovoltaics.

Chinese manufactures of photovoltaic crystalline silicon cells and modules, China Sunergy, has opened its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco.

TSMC has begun trial manufacturing of next generation chips for Apple's mobile devices, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

David Wang has resigned as CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to the China-based foundry, which named Wenyi Zhang chairman of the board of directors and acting CEO.

In an effort to increase its competitiveness in the North American consumer market, Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo: 6502) is selling its Chihuahua, Mexico-based LCD production facilities to PC manufacturer Compal Electronics Inc. The announcement, made in a press release today, comes on the heels of market reports that LCD TV demand in North America is "alarmingly" weak, despite increasing prices for LCD panels worldwide.

On July 13, 2011, Solar Frontier K.K. (Tokyo, Japan) announced that it has begun shipping 150 watt copper indium selenium (CIS) solar photovoltaic (PV) modules from its Kunitomi Plant in Japan.

Rama Skukla, VP of Intel's architecture group, said during his keynote address to the SEMICON West conference in San Francisco that tablets are disappearing, and that the kind of devices we will be using a decade from now "could not be described." Intel is gearing up for this change, and the next five years will see major advances in processor technology, he added.

3M has announced the completion of a major expansion of 3M's development laboratory and cleanroom located at its headquarters in Saint Paul, Minn. The expansion includes a 300mm CMP tool and defect metrology for product and application development.

It has the same silhouette as a standard light bulb: a white hot-air balloon with a silver, spiral basket. However, on closer inspection, the bulb itself is just a small part of the shape of the LED light. Along the sides are eight curved metal fins, cradling the bulb, designed to cool the device.

Shares of solar LDK Solar Co. jumped 4 percent Wednesday after it signed contracts to supply solar modules to two electric power companies in China.

Everybody has been copying Groupon, so why not the solar power folks? San Francisco officials are rolling out a first-in-the-nation program today where commercial building owners can participate in group purchasing for discounted solar power.

Analysts covering the solar energy technology industry have been reviewing the wares this week at the Intersolar North America industry conference in San Francisco, which started yesterday and ends tomorrow.

Dutch chip lithography manufacturer ASML reported strong sales in the second quarter, but said new orders in the third quarter would be significantly lower, lending weight to reports of slowdowns in the semiconductor industry.

"What foundries are seeing more and more, and what we're seeing overall, is a very tight linkage to consumer demand. All of us are disappointed with demand for PCs this year, and tablets probably will be 20 million units short of what people thought was possible for the year..."

Toshiba and SanDisk on July 12 celebrated the opening of Fab 5, the third 300mm wafer NAND fabrication facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Toshiba President Norio Sasaki also said the company is gaining on South Korea's Samsung Electronics in terms of flash memory global market share, though warned that the rivalry could undercut prices.

Globalfoundries will leverage Intermolecular's high productivity combinatorial (HPC) technology to accelerate the creation of process modules that will be integrated into Globalfoundries manufacturing lines worldwide.

LG is seeking to prevent the importation of Osram LED products into Korea, while the ITC has agreed to investigate Osram's complaints against both LG and Samsung. Meanwhile, Nichia has filed a lawsuit against a DIY retailer in Germany.

Yingli has experienced positive growth in the U.S. solar market, with module shipments having notably increased. It also announced the opening of a new R&D facility in San Francisco.