Leader of the UK's opposition party, Ed Miliband, has challenged the government's decision to slash the country's photovoltaic feed-in tariffs (FITs) for systems over 50 kilowatts in size.

Tough market conditions have forced polysilicon producer Daqo to lower its second-quarter financial outlook for revenue and shipments. The move came after Daqo was hit hard by weak demand and declining prices for its products

After declining for two consecutive quarters, rapidly falling PV module price is a key factor in strong recovery of PV module shipments and re-establishing demand in 2H 11, as per the latest report from IMS Research.

Analysts say the Pacific discovery could challenge China's dominance, if recovering the minerals from the seabed proves commercially viable. At present, China produces 97% of the world's rare earth metals.

Judge E. James Gildea found that Apple infringes US Patent No. 6,658,146 directed to systems and methods for compressing images and US Patent No. 6,683,978 directed to image data formats, both of which belong to S3 Graphics. In the industry, that technology is known as S3 Texture Compression (S3TC).

GE Lighting has announced plans to submit a 60W-equivalent LED lamp to the US Department of Energy (DOE) Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition targeted at solid-state-lighting (SSL) replacements for inefficient legacy lights. GE has collaborated with Cree using the latter's TrueWhite Technology in a design that the companies believe will meet the decidedly-challenging L-Prize requirements.

Four years ago, Congress had the not-so-bright idea to tell Americans what kind of light bulbs they could buy.

ARM has said that within 18 months its Mali GPU will be able to match the power of Sony's Playstation 3 or Microsoft's Xbox 360, but that Moore's Law was not the only way to achieve that.

A 2006 long-term wafer supply deal between Suntech and MEMC has been ?？utually terminated' at a cost to Suntech of approximately US$212 million. Suntech said that the decision to cancel the wafer supply deal was due to ?？apid changes in the market for silicon wafers.' Suntech also announced that it was stopping investment in CSG Solar's research and development operations, which focused on crystalline silicon thin-film technology. MEMC remains a wafer supplier to Suntech under other supply agreements.

Silver Age, a British Virgin Islands company, owns 100 percent of Solar Silicon Valley Electronic Science and Technology Co., Ltd., which is a China-based solar wafer manufacturer. It is, in turn, 70 percent owned by Jinglong Group, a company controlled by JA Solar's chairman, Baofang Jin.

"In the past, the semiconductor market tended to be weaker in the first half and stronger in the second half, but for this year, it is likely to remain flat throughout the latter half..."

IBM has solved two related problems with phase-change memory and now says the fast next-generation data-storage technology will be ready for use in 2016 in servers.

It's been barely a fortnight since UK customers started receiving their pre-orders for Sony's flagship HX923 series of Bravia LED-backlit LCD TVs, but now the Japanese manufacturer has issued a recall on all existing display models and boxed units from Sony Centres and independent dealers, following complaints from KDL-46HX923 and KDL-55HX923 owners about a physical defect on the LCD screen.

In early June, Gestamp Asetym Solar revealed that it would be working with French automaker Renault to install a solar system on the automakers manufacturing plants in France. The companies recently advised that they had chosen Trina Solar as the PV module supplier for the project. Through its subsidiary, Trina Solar Spain, the company signed a sales agreement with Gestamp, but neither company disclosed any of the financial details for the deal.

Two of potentially the largest utility-scale PV projects so far planned in China will be supplied modules by Yingli Green Energy. A module supply agreement has been signed with Huanghe Hydropower Development Co for the supply of a total of 110 MW of PV modules for two ground mounted plants to be built in Wulan, Qinghai province and Golmud, Qinghai province. Yingli said the modules are expected to be delivered from June through August of this year.

Australia's renewable energy sector has reassured consumers about the safety of household solar power systems after NSW Government released a statement yesterday discussing the results of an audit conducted by the Office of Fair Trading.

The DOE is working with utilities and local governments to streamline U.S. solar permitting - a 'new frontier for solar cost decline,' says advocacy group

The U.S. Energy Department said it is offering to guarantee about $4.5 billion in loans for First Solar Inc. to finance three renewable energy projects in California that the solar-panel maker is developing.

TI's Miho and Aizu sites and its Tokyo offices were affected by the initial magnitude 8.9 earthquake. Initial production lines at Miho resumed in mid-April, and full production will resume in third quarter. TI's fab in Aizu has returned to full production.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has announced that its chairman died. But shareholders rejected CEO David Wang's reappointment as a board director, and the company requested its shares be suspended from trading in Hong Kong pending the release of "price- sensitive" information.

An uncontrolled renewable power expansion in Germany could threaten the stability of energy grids, the head of energy agency Dena told Reuters on Wednesday.

Mouser Electronics announced a partnership agreement with LEDiL, a leader in innovative LED lighting optics for high-power and lighting-class LEDs.

After two quarters of declining shipments, photovoltaic module manufacturers are set to see strongly recovering demand through the second half of 2011.

Q-Cells SE of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany, which manufactures both silicon and thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, has introduced its Q.SMART CIGS PV modules in the North American market. Q.SMART is a high-yield and high-efficiency thin-film module designed to maximize power output and return-on-investment in distributed solar generation.

The production cost of solar power could be halved by 2013 given higher demand, improved technology and economies of scale, according to to Suntech Power Holdings Co, the world's largest thin-film solar cell manufacturer.

German solar company Q-Cells unveiled its thin film modules in the United States on Wednesday as it seeks to cash in on growing demand in North America while lessening its reliance on the European market, where government support for solar is declining.

The sector is beginning to see a decline in sales and product prices after several years of fast growth.

Spansion has announced a collaboration with Freescale on a memory expansion module for the Freescale Tower System that provides design engineers more flexibility in prototyping a growing range of embedded applications.

Vizio, a leading supplier of LED-backlit LCD HDTVs, announced it will enter the LED lighting market with a series of replacement lamps using LEDs supplied by Epistar and Seoul Semiconductor.

LDK Solar is the world's second largest manufacturer of solar wafers - displaced from the top spot by its rapidly growing rival GCL-Poly Energy Holdings last year. The company is also a leading vertically integrated manufacturer of photovoltaic products and competes with other solar energy players like First Solar, Suntech Power and Sunpower.

The solar power industry is facing a double threat from a Congress that may turn off the flow of federal subsidies and take a pass on mandating renewable-energy standards that would increase demand.

TSMC may first appear, in the fourth quarter, as a second-source supplier of the A5 processor, according to Gus Richard, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, who wrote about this in a research note last month and still maintains this outlook. Then TSMC would take on the next-gen A6.

Rubicon Technology is beginning volume production of 6-inch and 8-inch sapphire wafers at its state-of-the-art facility in Penang, Malasia, while GT Solar is investing $27 million to triple its sapphire production capacity in Salem, Mass.

Suntech Power's Just-Roof building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) module has been approved by French certification body CEIAB (Comit矇 d'Evaluation de l'Int矇gration au B璽ti). CEIAB is France's official evaluation committee for all BIPV products, and its endorsement sees Just Roof gain eligibility for the country's highest available feed-in-tariff.