Kyocera investigates solar panel growth

Kyocera, fighting to hold its own in a competitive solar panel market, is banking on a revival of Japanese subsidies to bolster sales, and said orders for its panels in Japan have jumped this year, says Reuters.

Kyocera, which has been losing market share amid price competition with rivals Q-Cells, First Solar and Suntech, has also seen a slight recovery in orders for its solar panels in Europe, its president said.

Japan is also home to Sharp and Sanyo Electric, which along with Kyocera are pioneers in solar panels, but the market remains small amid on-again, off-again state support for the technology.

Google is researching a number of energy-related technologies, including car charging software, where IT and 'ET', or energy technology, meet, said Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, according to CNET News.

The search giant is developing "smart charging" software to ensure that plug-in electric vehicles don't cause traffic jams on the power grid.

One of its projects, still in the experimental phase, is writing software to better manage when plug-in electric cars are charged, Reicher said at the Kema Utility of the Future conference last week.

Samsung has announced RAM modules aimed at green computing in the data centre that are the world's first 32GB DDR3 modules, reports Slippery Brick.

The modules operate at 1.35V and have 20% greater throughput compared to 1.5V DDR3 modules.

The RAM is for next-generation green servers and uses 4GB DDRs modules. The 32GB RDIMM modules are made from 72 different 4GB DDR3 chips using Samsung 50nm DRAM production.