Solar Tariffs News

The energy storage market is set to be the latest affected by Trump’s trade war as lithium-ion batteries were excluded from the group of Chinese imports for which the U.S. president announced tariffs would be delayed until December 15.

Neoen has shed light on its winning project in Portugal’s head-turning solar auction this summer, a tender consultants now say illustrates a new, bolder attitude towards merchant risks.

Ethiopia is currently trying to set up a methodology for the calculation of electricity tariffs for mini-grid systems. Should the government’s work come to fruition, it can provide much-needed certainty to mini-grid investors.

Researchers in the US have published a study that brings 20 years of renewable energy (solar PV and/or wind plus storage) generation into line with historical energy-demand profiles, to ascertain at what storage cost point renewables can cost-effectively consistently meet 100% demand.

On July 29, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s decision in Winding Creek Solar LLC v. Peterman et al., ruling that California’s feed-in tariff for small qualifying facilities (QFs), the Renewable Market Adjusting Tariff (ReMAT), violates the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) (Ninth Circuit Case No. 17-17531).

Hawaii’s residential solar market continues to contract, a phenomenon the industry largely attributes to policy changes that went into effect after the state ended net energy metering in 2015.

Portugal has unveiled the final results of the solar auction held over the summer, identifying a handful of major foreign winners of a tender hailed as a worldwide milestone.

Of the 38 new renewable energy projects that have been awarded, 13 are PV plants, representing 96.75 MW of capacity. The average price for solar was $57.58/MWh, and the minimum was $54.22/MWh.

Ukraine’s recently elected president has rubberstamped new legislation designed to promote domestic solar via special tariffs.

A major ground-mounted PV auction in France is set to boost the country’s solar capacity by 10%, with 107 developers successfully bidding on 858MW of capacity spread evenly across the country.

The global power and renewable energy market is expected to remain largely unaffected by the Trump administration’s new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods. Although shipments of Chinese modules into the U.S. market are falling, Chinese manufacturers sent more panels to overseas markets in the first half of this year than they did in the same period of 2018. Analysts from Fitch, meanwhile, claim the U.S. solar market will continue to expand, despite higher project costs.

The final segment in pv magazine’s look at unsung solar markets heads to Ukraine, where a generous feed in tariff and developments in the corporate PPA segment looks likely to push installations past the 1 GW mark for 2019.

Spain has an opportunity in its upcoming reform of electricity charging to clear hurdles for self-consumption and electric vehicles (EVs), according to national PV body UNEF.