QinetiQ will today bring Zephyr, its solar powered high-altitude long endurance (HALE) Unmanned Air System (UAS) back to earth after two weeks in the air. Celebrating, the company says it has smashed a number of long-standing official and unofficial world records.

AEG Power Solutions (AEG PS) has said it expects sales of its solar inverters to increase ten fold this year, following the news its Protect PV.250 solar inverter has yielded an efficiency grade of 98.7 percent from the the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) and Bureau Veritas.

Payom Solar AG and EGing Photovoltaic Technology Co., Ltd. have concluded a framework agreement, under which China-based EGing will provide Payom with 100 megawatts (MWs) of solar modules. The agreement will begin this year and is set to run until 2013.

?China-based JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. has entered into an agreement to supply 24 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules to Enfinity Asia Pacific Limited this year. Module shipments have already begun, says the company, and will continue throughout the year.?

Centrosolar France, the French subsidiary of Centrosolar Group AG, has completed three sloping-roof solar plant projects, worth a total of a €4 million in the southern French region of Ardeche. The company says it has achieved a new record for sloping-roof plants by installing over 5,000 modules.

The global building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) market will reach USD$8.2 billion in revenues by 2015 driven by the cost advantage that BIPV can provide versus conventional photovoltaics (PV) solutions, according to NanoMarkets, a U.S. Virginia-based market research and analysis company.

Photovoltaic (PV) module shipments are set to decline by nearly 10 percent quarter on quarter in the first quarter of next year, according to IMS Research’s latest report.

Switzerland-based Meyer Burger Ltd and Hennecke Systems GmbH have successfully concluded a contract of over CHF 60 million (around USD$57 million, €44.3 million) for wire saws, ID-saws and wafer inspection systems with mono- and multi-crystalline solar wafer manufacturer Nexolon in Korea.

Solexant Corp. has announced it is to locate its first commercial-scale 100 megawatt (MW) nanocrystal manufacturing facility in the city of Gresham, Oregon, the U.S. The plant, it says, will be Oregon’s first thin film solar manufacturing plant and the largest nanotechnology manufacturing facility in the world.

China-based Solarfun Power Holdings Co., Ltd. has announced that Jiangsu Linyang Solarfun Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Solarfun, has obtained a credit facility in the amount not exceeding RMB6 billion (around USD$885 million, €691 million), or an equivalent amount of foreign currency, from Bank of Shanghai, Nanjing branch. The contract has a term of five years.