Canadian Solar Inc. has announced that production will begin at its first solar module manufacturing facility in Canada early next year. Expected to be one of the largest solar panel module manufacturing plants in North America, the new facility will be the company’s first feed-in tariff domestic content compliant solar plant in Ontario. It will have a manufacturing capacity of 200 megawatts a year and will employ around 500 people.

Hyundai Heavy industries (HHI) has won a USD$700 million contract to build a 175-megawatt (MW) solar power plant in the U.S. from Matinee Energy. By the end of 2012 HHI says it will install two solar power plants in Dragoon and Cochise having 150 MW and 25 MW output respectively. The company adds that it is currently expanding its solar cell and module plant facilities to increase annual production capacity to 600MW.???

Concentrix Solar has announced it is going to inaugurate its first concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) power facility in South Africa at the Aquila Private Game Reserve in Touwsrivier on September 1.

Around 140 jobs are to be lost at Energy Conversion Devices, Inc., a manufacturer of thin film flexible solar laminate products, under a significant cost reduction plan.

SolarWorld has said that group-wide shipments in the first half of this year have risen by 58 percent to 377 megawatts (MW), whilst revenue grew by 50.8 percent to €608.4 million in comparison to the same period last year.

?Phoenix Solar AG has sold a record 177 megawatts peak (MWp) of modules in the first half of this year and achieved total revenues of €364 million – an increase of 138.7 percent over the same period last year. The components and systems segment, says the company, contributed a share of 58.9 percent or €214.3 million, thus raising revenues by 170.2 percent in a year-on-year comparison.

Solon Corporation has announced an agreement with Tucson Electric Power Company (TEP), under which the company will install a 1.6 megawatt (MW) turnkey solar power plant in Tucson, the U.S.

Germany-based Manz Automation AG has announced record revenues of €67.5 million for the first half of this year, which it says is largely due to new orders and an order backlog of around €100 million.

A team of researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), funded by the U.S Department of Energy’s solar technologies program, has released a 144-page renewable energy feed-in tariff (FIT) guide, aimed at helping to “improve future policy design”.

Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. has stopped manufacturing amorphous silicon thin film solar panels, in order to focus on crystalline silicon solar cells at its Shanghai, China facility. The “rapid cost reduction and improving competitiveness” of crystalline silicon solar panels was cited as the main reason. The company says that, as a result, it expects to incur a thin film equipment non-cash impairment charge of approximately USD$50 million to USD$55 million in the second quarter of this year.