SunPower Corporation has completed a 505-kilowatt solar power installation for Horizon Power, a government-owned utility providing power to remote and regional communities and resource operations in Western Australia.

Centrosolar Group AG has said it expects to see revenue in excess of €370 million this year, despite a “substantial” fall in demand in the German market, predicted to take place in the third quarter of this year. The company adds that the high increase in solar module production capacity in April, from 110 MWp to currently around 155 MWp, has not been enough to meet fully the high level of demand from both Germany and other European core markets, particularly France and Italy.

TÜV Rheinland AG has opened its seventh laboratory worldwide in the Indian city of Bangalore for testing solar modules and systems. The company has invested €2 million in the new solar test centre, which will, in particular, offer services to India’s growing solar industry. The test centre has 2,000 square meters of space, including an outside test field of 500 square meters, with equipment such as five climate chambers and two sun simulators. This, says the company, makes it the most up to date and largest laboratory in the entire South Asian economic area.

Cumulative photovoltaics (PV) installations will top 120 gigawatts (GW) by the end of 2014, according to IMS Research’s recently launched “Global PV Demand Database”. The report also revealed that annual PV installations will grow steadily at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of more than 20 percent between 2011 and 2014. In these four years, says IMS, some 80 GW of new PV capacity will be added globally. Growth rates are predicted to slow over the next four years, however, compared to the huge 95 percent growth rate forecast for this year.

Dr. Farooq Abdullah, the Hon’ble Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy urged the Indian solar photovoltaics (PV) industry to focus on developing research initiatives, during the Solarcon India 2010, held in Hyderabad, India last week.

The government of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India has undertaken several outstanding initiatives in solar photovoltaics (PV), according to K. Rosaiah, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who was speaking at the Solarcon India 2010 show in Hyderabad, India.

Spain’s Asociación Empresarial Fotovoltaica (AEF) announced at a press conference held last week that negotiations on future solar subsidiaries have been postponed for the next two months, while the country’s government awaits the results of an investigation to find out which PV plants were illegally connected to the power grid in September 2008.

Enel Green Power, Sharp and STMicroelectronics have signed a binding letter of commitment for a project financing agreement for €150 million for the development of what will be Italy’s biggest photovoltaics (PV) panel factory.

India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan (Presidential palace), the residence of the the Honorable President of India has received the ISO 14001:2004 certification, which was granted by the U.K.’s Bureau Veritas in view of the various standardized environment management practices, including solar energy, it has adopted.

Following yesterday’s news that Panasonic is looking set to buy out Sanyo Electric Company, Sanyo Eneos Solar has announced it has postponed its planned photovoltaics thin film production project, originally scheduled to start this year, and is instead concentrating on efficiency enhancement and marketing activities. The reason cited was a “dramatically” changing business environment, due to the decreasing price of crystalline silicon.