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Saudi Arabia will export as much solar energy as it does petrol today, according to the country’s Minister for Petrol and Raw Materials Ali Al-Naimi, who was speaking at a one-day Saudi-German solar conference, held today in Magdeburg, Germany.

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.

The U.K. photovoltaics (PV) market could be artificially restrained by its government, after attaching certain conditions to its payment of remuneration, says market research institute, EuPD Research.

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.

Recurrent Energy has secured around USD$18 million for its five-megawatt (MW) solar power system, located at the Sunset Reservoir in San Francisco, the U.S. When completed, the company says the project will be one of the country’s largest municipal solar power systems and will more than triple San Francisco’s total municipal solar energy output.

pv magazine has learned from Professor Martin Green that Australia’s University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence will not be closing its doors, despite losing financial support from the ARC Centre of Excellence program from the end of this year.

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.

Electricity generated from new photovoltaics (PV) installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants, in what has been dubbed a historic crossover.

Würth Solar has acquired Germany-based SolarMarkt AG, along with its subsidiary Creotecc GmbH, and all foreign subsidiaries and project companies. The company also stated that it is looking to increase sales its to over €500 million by 2014 in a bid to “grow faster than the market”.