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New research has revealed that while forecasts for the photovoltaic manufacturing equipment industry are depressing, there is a 20 gigawatt (GW) opportunity to replace aging equipment over the next four years.

As was announced yesterday, the U.K. Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has proposed yet more changes to the country’s photovoltaic feed-in tariffs (FITs). While the move has been described as a “huge step forward”, the industry says the impending tariff reductions will be “destructive”.

French electricity giant, Electricité de France (EdF) has announced its intention to acquire French solar producer, Photowatt, which filed for insolvency last November.

The PV Legal project has found that while positive progress has been made in reducing bureaucratic barriers to photovoltaic implementation, there are still many in place, which continue to hinder development. Grid connection was highlighted as the biggest bottleneck.

The Italian arm of Solon has announced a new strategy, aimed at repositioning itself as a systems integrator. As such, will close its 95 megawatt photovoltaic module production plant on February 20. Seventy employees will be affected by the changes.

In a bid to make the U.K. photovoltaic feed-in tariffs (FITs) more “predictable”, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has put forward a number of reforms. “Transparency, longevity and certainty” are said to be key to the new scheme, which has been inspired by Germany’s tariff structure.

The traditionally semi-nomadic communities residing in southern Israel’s Negev desert have been the subject of disputes involving land, poverty and access for some time. A wave of initiatives to encourage villages to gain official recognition status, in order to profit from covering privately owned land with ground-mounted photovoltaic systems, is providing one method of aiding negotiations, despite the thorny social issues that come with them.

Germany’s Federal Environment Minister, Norbert Röttgen, has confirmed his attendance at the first “Energy Storage – Summit for the Storage of Renewable Energies” conference, scheduled to be held in Düsseldorf this March. During the event, he will address the issue of energy storage transformation.

Sanyo Solar (USA) LLC (SSU) has confirmed it will be closing its solar wafer and ingots facility down at the end of March. Around 140 employees will be affected.

First Solar is to reduce production at its Frankfurt/Oder manufacturing facility in Germany by 50 percent. As a result, 1,200 employees will be moved onto six months of shorter working hours.