New data has confirmed the effects of a second rooftop solar boom taking place around Australia – driven by falling technology costs and increasingly volatile electricity prices – with nearly one quarter of all Australian households found to have invested in solar panels.

The German Renewable Energy Federation (known as the “Bundesverband Erneuerbare Energie” or BEE in Germany) has good news and bad news. The good news? From January to June, the country produced a record 35 percent of its electricity from renewable energy.\

Major PV inverter supplier Sungrow has achieved 1GW of solar inverter shipments to India, having entered the market in 2010.

Leading polysilicon and solar wafer producer GCL-Poly Energy Holdings has sold a 10% share in its planned 60,000MT polysilicon plant in Xinjiang, China for around US$22 million (RMB 150 million) to monocrystalline wafer producer Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor Co.