From pv magazine Global

Researchers from India have proposed a novel bifacial electron transport layer (ETL)-free cell structure for flexible devices. They optimized this cell using SCAPS-1D simulation software, selecting the most effective combination of front transparent electrode (FTE), hole transport layer (HTL), and rear transparent electrode (RTE). The new structure has achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) surpassing 27%.

“ETL-free perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are the most promising and acceptable devices for developing flexible PSCs due to lower temperature processing, the simplest configuration, and the elimination of complex preparation routes, which reduces energy and time,” said the researchers. “They can be easily processed by roll-to-roll method, spray coating, inkjet printing, and can be encapsulated with low-cost flexible layers.”

The scientists began with a reference structure consisting of an FTE layer of PFTO; interfacial defect layer (IDL)1; a perovskite layer (FA0.75MA0.25PbI2.5Br0.5); IDL2; HTL layer of Spiro-OMeTAD; IDL3; and an RTE layer of Cu/Cu2O (PFTO/IDL1/FA0.75MA0.25PbI2.5Br0.5/IDL2/Spiro-OMeTAD/IDL3/Cu/Cu2O). They set the perovskite layer thickness to 600 nm.

“Upon selecting a suitable FTE, we observed that the lower value of conduction band offset (CBO) at the FTE/perovskite interface exhibits improved device performance due to the potential-well-like structure,” the group explained. “CuI and CuSCN show superior band alignment with the perovskite absorber layer compared to other HTLs, resulting in improved device performance. The electron affinity of RTE plays a crucial role in the band alignment at the RTE/HTL interface and, hence, the device performance.”

After finalizing the champion cell, the group investigated its bandgap and thickness.

“The device PCE increases up to an optimized bandgap of 1.4 eV, achieving a PCE of 24.65% (front illumination) and 25.48% (rear illumination). Beyond this bandgap, the PCE starts decreasing,” the results showed. “After optimizing the thickness of the absorber layer (800 nm) with a defect density of 1.0 × 10^14 cm−3, the PCE improves to 26.88% and 27.35%.”

They presented their results in “Performance optimization of ETL-free bifacial perovskite solar cells for flexible devices: A simulation study,” which was recently published in Next Energy. The team included researchers from India’s National Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Technology.

From pv magazine Global

An Indian-Chinese research team has developed a novel dual-axis solar tracking system based on sensors and a controller module.

“In this work, an attempt was made to design and implement a single tracking motor with dual axis for a simple yet effective control system,” the researchers said. “No programming or computer interface is required as standard electronic circuits are used. This system is independent and self-sufficient.”

The group explained that the novel system uses two different sensor types – an ultraviolet (UV) sensor and a micro-electromechanical solar (MEMS) sensor. “The UV sensor calculates the intensity of UV radiation received from the sun, and the MEMS sensor forecasts the sun’s path across the sky,” they added.

The data collected by those sensors are then fed into an arithmetic optimization-based PID (AOPID) controller, which uses arithmetic-based functions to attain a better response time, tracking accuracy, and disturbance rejection.

“The AOPID controller utilizes the inputs from the UV and MEMS sensors to modify the position of the solar panels and optimize energy capture,” the scientists further explained. “The controller achieves this by using a feedback loop that adjusts the controller’s proportional, integral and derivative gains to reduce the variation between the set-point and the real location of the solar panels through the use of arithmetic optimization algorithms.”

The academics tested the proposed system using MATLAB simulation software based on a 50 W simulated PV panel. They then compared its power production and consumption over a few hours to those of a simulated fixed-tilt PV system.

“The comparative energy analysis graph demonstrates that the dual-axis solar tracking system that was suggested was more productive than the fixed-tilt solar tracking system and matrix converter,” the researchers “Achieving a high net energy requires precisely adjusting the controller’s parameters and positioning the panels.”

The system was presented in the paper “Solar PV tracking system using arithmetic optimization with dual axis and sensor,” published in Measurement: Sensors. The research was conducted by scientists from China’s Xinxiang Vocational and Technical College and India’s Publon Research Centre.

Heliene, a solar panel provider serving North America, and Premier Energies, a solar cell manufacturer based in India, announced a joint venture to produce solar cells in the United States.

The solar cell manufacturing facility is expected to produce an annual aggregate capacity of 1 GW of N-Type cells to supply Heliene and Premier’s solar cell requirements.

Heliene currently sources solar cells from Premier’s Hyderabad facility for use in module manufacturing at its Mountain Iron, MN location.

“Premier Energies has been a valued partner of Heliene’s for many years now and we share a commitment to providing the highest-quality, most-reliable products to solar customers. With demand for U.S.-made modules and components growing, now is the perfect time to embark on the next phase of our partnership with this joint venture,” said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene.

Under the joint venture, Heliene will contribute construction, project management, human resources, financial resource and management, facility operations, supply chain and logistics, and regulatory expertise. Premier will contribute cell technology engineering and operational expertise in the manufacturing process of the cells, manufacturing equipment selection, financial resources, raw material vendor relationships and supply agreements management.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has tax credits and incentives designed to encourage clean energy manufacturing in the United States. Many large companies have announced solar module manufacturing facilities, but earlier stages in the supply chain like raw polysilicon, ingots, wafers, and solar cell manufacturing facilities have lagged, creating gaps in the domestic supply chain. The Heliene/Premier partnership brings critical solar cell manufacturing capacity to U.S. shores.

An industry note from Philip Shen, managing director, Roth Capital Partners, warned that the United States may soon face another ongoing tariff enforcement saga.

The note said that based on new regulations from the Department of Commerce, new antidumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) cases could be filed as soon as April 25.

AD/CVD laws assess tariffs on goods that are found to be dodging import duties by dumping products in other countries before shipping them to the U.S. In the previous AD/CVD proceeding, four Southeastern Asian countries, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia, which were responsible for roughly 80% of the U.S. supply of solar components, were alleged as potentially harboring dumped products from China.

Resulting tariffs of components found in violation ranged as high as 50% to 250% of the cost of shipped goods. The looming threat of tariffs led to high levels of risk and uncertainty in the market, and about 20% of utility-scale solar capacity was delayed or cancelled in the first half of 2022 due to this risk. In June 2022, President Biden placed a two year pause on new solar AD/CVD tariffs, which is set to expire this summer.

Roth said it remains “difficult to gauge” how high the tariffs could be in the new case later this month.

An industry contact told Roth that the petitions for AD/CVD cases will likely occur as soon as possible after the April 25 date, because petitioners “want AD/CVD preliminary decisions to be coming out during the heat of election season.”

Roth also noted that it is possible India will join the four Southeastern Asian nations in this round of AD/CVD investigation.

From pv magazine India

Cleantech Solar, a supplier of renewable energy to corporate entities, has secured a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with US module manufacturer First Solar. It has agreed to construct 150 MW of solar and 16.8 MW of wind-generating assets in India, supplying around 7.3 GWh of clean electricity to First Solar’s new 3.3 GW vertically integrated solar manufacturing facility in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Once it is fully commissioned by the third quarter of 2024, the solar and wind generation assets are expected to cover up to 70% of the facility’s anticipated electricity needs. They are expected to displace almost 7,000 kilotons of CO2 emissions over the duration of the PPA.

Cleantech Solar will procure 150 MW of advanced, India-made Series 7 thin-film solar panels from First Solar, for use in the PV component of the project. The modules are expected to be delivered in the first half of 2024.

First Solar’s cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film modules have among the lowest carbon and water footprint of any commercially available PV modules. The modules are included in the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry for sustainable electronics, signifying strong performance on metrics evaluating the management of substances in the product, manufacturing energy and water use, product packaging, end-of-life recycling and corporate responsibility.

“Our new manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu sets a high benchmark for responsible and sustainable vertically integrated solar manufacturing, not just in India, but globally,” said Sujoy Ghosh, vice president and managing director of First Solar India. “By powering our operations with clean, renewably-generated electricity, we are working to further reduce our environmental footprint, which is already the lowest in the industry.”

First Solar’s Tamil Nadu plant, located in an area of high baseline water stress, is purportedly the world’s first net-zero water withdrawal solar manufacturing facility.

“This collaboration extends beyond powering First Solar’s flagship manufacturing facility in India; it involves leveraging their advanced, ultra-low carbon thin film solar panels to energize our solar assets,” said Sachin Jain, chief executive officer of Cleantech Solar.

With this latest agreement, Cleantech Solar’s total portfolio in Tamil Nadu now stands at nearly 500 MW (including solar, wind and hybrid power projects under operational and construction stages).

Singapore-based Cleantech Solar has built numerous solar and wind projects across India and Southeast Asia, with around 1.2 GWp of assets in various stages of development. The company is backed by Keppel Corp., Keppel Asia Infrastructure Fund, and Shell Singapore.

New Delhi-based Gautam Solar exhibited its new generation of N-Type TOPCon solar modules at the RE+ conference in Las Vegas, introducing the new products to the U.S. market.

The company has released new product lines, spanning residential, commercial, and utility-scale applications. The modules have been certified by UL, a prominent global testing and certification company based in the U.S.

“N-type TOPCon solar modules experience lower degradation (1% in first-year and 0.4% year-on-year) than P-type solar modules (2% in first-year and 0.55% year-on-year) which ensures longevity of the solar project,” said Gautam Solar. “They provide 5% more generation every year and BOS Savings of 3.26% and LCOE reduction of 1.56%.”

Gautam Solar’s new lineup includes:

• 435 Wp Module with 108 cells designed for rooftop residential (21.77% efficiency)
• 475 Wp Module with 120 cells designed for residential and commercial projects (22.01% efficiency)
• 580 Wp Module with 144 cells designed for large commercial and industrial and utility-scale (22.45% efficiency)

The modules incorporate half-cut cells based on larger M10 wafer to enable more power production per unit area as compared to polycrystalline and full-cell monocrystalline modules, said the company. Improved levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and low-light performance are enabled by the half-cut cell design, it said. 

Gautam also uses round ribbon connectors in its cells to boost light utilization, and non-destructive cell cutting to minimize microcracking. Its cells integrate multi-busbars for lowered electrical losses. Further, the M10 cells ensure maximum space utilization in a standard 40 foot shipping container.

Monofacial and bifacial variants are available for the N-type modules, with the bifacial module incorporating a lightweight transparent back sheet to add 10% to 30% more production. 

“We’re also adding solar power plant design and remote monitoring services at no extra cost for our customers to provide a more comprehensive solar solutions package,” said Gautam Mohanka, chief executive officer, Gautam Solar.

Gautam manufactures the modules at its facility in Haridwar, India. The company has announced plans to add a 1 GW manufacturing facility in the United States, joining the solar manufacturing gold rush.

From pv magazine India

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) have jointly launched the U.S.- India Renewable Energy Technology Action Platform (RETAP) under the Strategic Clean Energy Partnership.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced RETAP during a meeting on June 22. The move underscored their growing collaboration on emerging technologies to expedite the clean energy transition.

RETAP was established to enhance bilateral collaboration, emphasizing technology-driven, time-bound results. Its primary goal is to advance emerging renewable technologies for deployment and scaling.

Initially, RETAP will focus on green and clean hydrogen, wind energy, long-duration energy storage, and the exploration of geothermal, ocean/tidal energy, and other emerging technologies, to be determined mutually in the future.

The DOE and the MNRE have outlined an initial workplan for RETAP collaboration, guided by five themes: research and development, innovative technology piloting and testing, advanced training and skill development, policy and planning for renewable energy technologies and enabling technologies, and investment, incubation, and outreach programs.

During the meeting, delegations shared information about emerging technology developments in each country, covering hydrogen, energy storage, wind power, geothermal energy, marine renewable energy technologies, and clean energy deployment programs.

Vikram Solar, an India-based solar module producer, has partnered with investors Phalanx Impact Partners and Das & Co. to create a U.S. joint venture, VSK Energy LLC. The new company plans to invest up to $1.5 billion to develop a vertically integrated solar manufacturing operation.

The first phase of the investment consists of a $250 million investment to establish the Colorado module manufacturing facility in a recently completed building owned by Mortenson Properties and Hyde Development.

The new factory is expected to create over 900 direct jobs with an average salary of more than $70,000 and 200 construction phase jobs. VSK Energy expects the facility to commence operations in 2024 with an initial capacity of 2 GW of solar PV modules and planned expansion of up to 4 GW in the coming years.

With two planned projects, VSK extends Vikram Solar’s 17 years of solar manufacturing experience to the U.S. with financial support from sustainability-focused private equity firm Phalanx Impact Partners and Das & Co., a multi-tiered asset manager.

“Colorado is one of the top states in the country for solar production so this expansion in Brighton will help build upon our plans to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040, create more than 900 new good-paying jobs for Coloradans and contribute to our state’s thriving economy,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

“Cleantech in Colorado contributes $4.6 billion per year to the state’s economy and employs over 62,000 Colorado workers. By establishing a new solar manufacturing facility in Brighton, VSK will grow this important employment sector and help further Colorado’s commitment to grow clean energy technologies,” said Eve Lieberman, Executive Director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

The second phase of investment would complete VSK’s vertical integration of the solar manufacturing process with the development of a second U.S. factory in a Southern state to produce solar ingots, cells and wafers with a planned annual capacity of 4 GW and $1.25 billion capital commitment.

VSK Energy is expected to commence operations in 2025 following the evaluation and finalization of available federal, state, regional, and local incentives for the project. The new factory is expected to create over 1,500 direct jobs and 1,000 construction jobs.

Mortenson, a leading solar engineering, procurement, construction, and commercial contracting firm, will oversee the engineering and construction of both phases of VSK Energy’s planned investment.

To construct both phases of VSK Energy’s planned module and ingot facilities, Mortenson intends to hire hundreds of team members from the local communities involved in the project, including pipefitters, electricians, sheet metal workers, plumbers, operators, carpenters, laborers and safety professionals.

“With our 17 years of experience in solar manufacturing, combined with the VSK team’s commitment to a clean energy future, we look forward to driving the solar industry forward and setting a new benchmark for innovation and efficiency in solar manufacturing in the United States.”

“The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a landmark moment for the clean energy future of the United States,” said Sriram Das, Co-Chairman of VSK Energy and Managing Director of Das & Co. “The Biden Administration and Congress have called for immediate action and through our partnership in VSK, we are taking a decisive step towards achieving solar technology self-sufficiency, fortifying America’s energy security, and propelling large-scale solar deployment.”

Dentons LLP represented Vikram Solar for the creation of the VSK Energy JV, while McDermott Will & Emery represented Phalanx Impact Partners and Reed Smith represented Das & Co.

Based in Kolkata, India, Vikran Solar has a presence in 32 countries, operates a portfolio of 1.42 GW of PV projects and employs close to 2,000 employees. The company’s cumulative production capacity of solar modules is 3.5 GW.

First Solar, a manufacturer of U.S.-made solar panels, posted $548 million in Q1 2023 revenue, about 26% lower than the market consensus of $743 million for its first quarter.

During Q1 2023, First Solar executed 9.9 GW of contracts and recognized 1.9 GW of volume sold, resulting in a total backlog of 69.4 GW, with an aggregate value sold of $20.4 billion, which implies approximately $0.293 per watt, an increase of approximately half a penny per watt from Q4 2022.

During the quarter, First Solar produced 2.36 GW of Series 6 panels, whose average watts per module was 467 W.

Production of Series 7 modules began in January 2023 with 170 MW of modules produced. The company said it recently demonstrated high-volume manufacturing production capable of up to 10,000 modules per day at its third Ohio facility, which houses Series 7 module production.  The demo rate is 60% of nameplate throughput capacity, with panels achieving top bin production at 535 W.

Shipments of Series 7 modules, which used all-U.S. glass and steel components, are on track to begin as early as June 2023, Widmer said in prepared remarks.  Outside of the U.S., First Solar is also expected to begin production in Chennai, India at a 3.54 GW nameplate facility in the second half of 2023 as well.

The company’s Cadmium-telluride (CadTel) technology certified a new record in Q1 2023 with a conversion efficiency of 22.3%.

First Solar’s common stock traded at $176.80 per share this morning, down about 11.5% after the company missed market estimates for Q1 sales. The company has a $19.5 billion market capitalization and has long-term total bookings opportunities of 113 GW for modules.

Guidance

First Solar’s guidance is unchanged from prior quarters, with an expectation of generating $3.4 billion to $3.6 billion in revenue this year, a $1 billion increase over the $2.6 billion of annual sales for 2022. The company’s production guidance of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion gross margin also factors in a $110 million to $130 million boost from the Series 7 module ramp up activity and some benefits from the Section 45X tax credit of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Financial guidance includes a huge contribution of $660 million to $710 million from Section 45X tax benefits factored into the company’s operating income expectation of $745 million to $870 million.

Section 45X, the advanced manufacturing production tax credit, is a per-unit tax credit for each clean energy component domestically produced and sold by a manufacturer and is claimed on federal corporate income taxes. The credit varies by eligible component and is multiplied by the number of units produced by the company sold that year. In First Solar’s case, its U.S.-made solar modules can receive a credit of $0.07 per watt.

“We anticipate our earnings profile will be higher in 2H 2023 due to contractual delivery schedules, timing of first sales of our Series 7 products and the timing of recognition of Section 45X benefits, driven by both the timing of volumes sold as well as the inventory lag where our product sold in the early part of 2023 may have been manufactured in 2022,” Widmer said.

“From a Section 45X perspective, based on the aforementioned factors, we expect to recognize approximately 25% of our full year guidance in the first half of the year and approximately 75% in the second half,” he added.

During the earnings call, Widmer said the company continues to await guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department related to the domestic content bonus provision of the Inflation Reduction Act.

At the end of Q1 2023, First Solar had a cash balance of $922 million.

Production ramp

In Alabama, First Solar’s fourth U.S. factory received environmental permits, with the foundation of early factory construction underway. Tooling equipment has been ordered and the facility remains on schedule for completion by the end of 2024, with commercial operations ramping through 2025, Widmer said in prepared remarks.

When Alabama becomes fully operational, facility expansions in Ohio and Alabama are expected to increase First Solar’s annual nameplate capacity in the U.S. to over 10 GW.

New booking

First Solar kicked off Q2 2023 by separately announcing a 2 GW, two-year order from utility solar developer Leeward Renewable Energy, bringing the developer’s total orders to date of First Solar modules to 6 GW for projects to be developed through 2028.

Deliveries for the modules will take place in 2026 and 2027 for the Dallas, Texas-based developer.

Leeward, a portfolio company of OMERS Infrastructure, a Canadian investment firm, is a renewable energy development company that owns and operates 25 projects across nine U.S. states with about 2.7 GW of generating capacity.

from pv magazine India

Gujarat, India-based Prescinto Technologies announced this week it had successfully raised $6.5 million in financing and launched in the U.S. market by securing a deal with an energy storage specialist. Prescinto will provide real-time data monitoring and analytics of energy storage assets installed by the American company globally. 

The deal also marks the expansion of Prescinto’s technology solutions, which already manage more than 12 GW of solar and wind energy assets across 14 countries. Prescinto claims its asset performance management platforms offer up to 7% or more improvement in energy generation for solar and wind energy projects and optimization for battery energy storage systems (BESS).

The company’s cloud-based, asset-agnostic platform remotely retrieves critical battery data, tracks energy block-wise data, and provides critical insights to improve asset performance and automation. To provide a tailor-made solution, Prescinto provides a SaaS license for operations and engineering teams with a customized performance analytics tool for monitoring and testing battery health, battery performance enhancement, module tracking, and overall digitization of the life cycle of a battery’s performance.

 “This partnership with a global leader in energy storage will be instrumental in opening doors to the energy storage space and our clientele/business in the United States,” said Puneet Singh Jaggi, founder and CEO of Prescinto. “Our advanced monitoring and analytics technology enables our clients to maximize the value of their energy storage assets through market-specific optimization.”

From pv magazine India

Reliance Industries revealed plans to acquire 79.4% of California-based SenseHawk for $32 million by the end of this year.

SenseHawk develops software-based tools for solar asset management. It accelerates solar projects from planning to production by helping companies to streamline processes and use automation. Reliance Industries, which recorded a net profit of $9 billion in fiscal 2021-22, said the investment will support SenseHawk’s future growth and R&D.

“In collaboration with SenseHawk, we will drive down costs, enhance productivity and improve on-time performance to deliver the lowest [levelized cost of electricity] for solar projects globally, and make solar energy the go-to source of power in lockstep with our vision for solar energy,” said Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries.

SenseHawk has helped more than 140 customers in 15 countries to adopt new technology at more than 600 sites, with total assets surpassing 100 GW. Its Solar Digital Platform offers end-to-end management of the solar asset lifecycle.  

“This partnership will open new use cases, help our nascent markets, and offer higher value to customers across the solar lifecycle,” said Rahul Sankhe, the president and co-founder of SenseHawk. “We are on a mission to improve the solar energy ecosystem, acquiring 50% of the market by 2025.”

Covington & Burling LLP and Khaitan & Co. are acting as legal advisers on the deal. Deloitte is serving as the accounting and tax adviser to Reliance Industries on the transaction.

Microsoft has ambitious climate goals. The tech firm is committed to being carbon negative by 2030, and by 2050 it plans to have removed all the emissions it has generated since its founding in 1975. To achieve the 2030 goal, the company plans to match 100% of its energy consumption with zero carbon energy purchases. In 2021, Microsoft signed new power purchase agreements (PPA) for 5.8 GW of renewable energy in ten countries, bringing its total to 8 GW procured through PPAs or long-term contracts.

Recently announced is the signing of a long-term renewable energy agreement with Amplus Solar to purchase power from a 100 MW solar project currently being developed in the Indian state of Rajasthan. The deal is part of Microsoft’s plan to source all its electricity to power its operations from renewable sources by 2025, including its data centers, buildings and campuses. The purchased power will likely offset that used by Microsoft Malaysia.

“Today’s announcement builds on our long-standing partnership that now extends into sustainable business transformation,” said K Raman, managing director of Microsoft Malaysia. “This strategic partnership will not only contribute to our own sustainability goals, but it also presents us the opportunity to apply the latest digital technology to support Petronas’ transition to a more sustainable future.”

Amplus is a member of the Petronas Group (Petroliam Nasional Berhad) based in Malaysia. It will work with Microsoft to develop an intelligent platform powered by data and artificial intelligence (AI) to support Petronas’ efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Amplus Solar currently owns and manages a portfolio of 1 GWp+  of operational and under construction distributed solar assets comprising 400+ projects spread over across 24 states in India.

In its 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report, Microsoft noted that business revenue increased by 20% while reducing operational emissions by approximately 17% as a result of the company’s renewable energy purchasing. However, its Scope 3 emissions (comprising the company’s entire value chain) increased in 2021 by about 23% due to the carbon emitted from the generation of electricity needed to power its consumer devices as well as in the production of concrete and steel used in construction. The report points out that during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a spike in the use of its Xbox and Surface devices, which combined accounted for nearly 30% of its Scope 3 emissions. The company notes that it has programs in place to lower these emissions including investing in carbon removal offsets.

Last month AES and Microsoft announced that the companies had entered into a 20-year agreement under which AES will provide renewable energy to power Microsoft’s California data centers, with AES partially matching the load of Microsoft’s California Data Centers with electricity generated from a portfolio of 110 MW of solar projects and 55 MW/220MWh storage projects, all set to be constructed in California. Four of Microsoft’s data centers are Zero Waste certified, with new certifications announced for data centers in Texas and Washington.

Capital costs for 100 MWdc solar projects are set to rise 6% this year, according to one analyst.

US-owned Wood Mackenzie issued a note this week which also estimated China will add 75 GW of the 110 GW of new solar to arrive in the Asia-Pacific region in 2022.

The world will pass a terrawatt of solar generation capacity this year, the Edinburgh-based company added, and North America will see its share of the world’s new solar capacity double from the 11% recorded last year.

How much?

It was not clear from the note whether the project capital cost rise predicted would apply solely to the US.

The analyst said it had observed a “substantial amount of [solar] module volumes for utility scale projects” postponed after Californian manufacturer Auxin Solar in February lodged an anti-circumvention petition to the authorities.

Auxin has claimed Chinese companies are manufacturing products on home soil and only putting the final touches to them in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia before labeling them as made in the latter-named nations to get around US anti-dumping and countervailing duties.

An anti-circumvention investigation is under way and Wood Mackenzie said the development is also prompting some manufacturers to shift “importer of record” responsibility onto panel buyers.

Germany will lead the European push for solar this decade, Wood Mackenzie predicted, because of a new governing coalition and the nation’s dependence on Russian gas.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means the Russia and Caspian Sea regions will add no new solar capacity this year, the analyst said.

Solar manufacturing

Rising solar costs will be partially offset by plans to add, this year, production lines sufficient to produce an extra 200,000 metric tons of polysilicon per year, plus 1 GW more cells, 1 GW more wafers, and 500 MW more modules.

The analyst noted moves by India this year to tax solar imports and bolster domestic production would also “shift the pricing and supply dynamics in the US and India.”

First Solar announced financial results for the first quarter that ended March 31, 2022, noting a drop in net sales of $540 million and a loss per share of $0.41.

Net sales for the first quarter were $367 million, and the company attributed the $540 million decrease from the prior quarter to a decrease in volume of modules sold, a decrease in the module average selling price, and lower project revenue in Japan.

The first quarter loss per share was $0.41, compared to earnings per diluted share of $1.23 in the fourth quarter of 2021. On the earnings call, Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar, noted that the $0.41 loss per share was within their internal expectations, and “is reflective of what is projected to be a challenging 2022 from an earnings standpoint”.

Cash, restricted cash, and marketable securities also saw a drop from $1.8 billion at the end of the prior quarter to $1.6 billion in Q1 2022. The company attributes this decrease to capital expenditures related to expansion in India and Ohio and operating expenses.

“We are encouraged by our strong bookings progress, as we booked 11.9 GW_DC in less than 60 days since the prior earnings call, bringing our year-to-date bookings total to 16.7 GW_DC, further setting ourselves up for 2023 and beyond,” said Widmar. “Our agile approach to contracting continues to attract customers looking for long-term certainty and value.”

Widmar noted that recent bookings are mostly with long-term repeat customers, but that there is a “significant volume” with new customers, which points to their trust in the company, the value of the cadmium telluride technology, and the company’s adherence to “principles of responsible solar but also the risk of pursuing a ‘solar at any cost’ strategy”.

The technology roadmap includes development of bi-facial cadmium telluride technology as well as plans to scale into the residential market–likely with the technology under development in partnership with SunPower.

On the earnings call, Widmar expressed the company’s view of trade policy and the Forced Labor Act, saying that trade and industrial policy decisions “play a role in impacting market dynamics”.  He pointed out that First Solar was the first US solar manufacturer to join the Responsible Business Alliance, which he said offers the leading standard, adding that “the transition to sustainable energy future must not come at the price of human rights”.

As for the petition by Auxin, Widmar highlighted the company’s stance. He said that First Solar sees the anti-circumvention inquiry as a positive step toward addressing the issue of modules being completed in Southeast Asia in an attempt to avoid tariffs. “For too long the American solar manufacturing industry has been under siege from Chinese headquartered and subsidize companies that have been violating the rules of free and fair trade.”

We’ve heard the ‘sky is falling’ narrative pushed by lobbyists advocating for China to have free reign in the US market. Their doom and gloom is telling. It suggests that they are afraid that the Dept of Commerce will find that the Chinese solar manufacturers in fact engaged in circumvention and will hold them accountable for their unfair and unlawful trade practices. While the lobbyists characterize Auxin as a single company seeking to inappropriately exploit the law it is precisely cases like this that the laws are designed for.

Widmar called for a “combination of durable industrial policy, smart trade policy and enforcement of the rule of law in order to build back American solar manufacturing and innovation”.

From pv magazine India

“The company is in active discussions regarding the factory’s location,” Laureen Sanderson, chief communications officer for CubicPV, told pv magazine. “Effectively immediately, the five-year agreement – subject to certain terms and conditions and with options for renewal – establishes a commitment for an annual purchase volume of 1 GW of Direct Wafer cells from Cubic’s factory.”

Waaree will begin purchasing cells from CubicPV upon completion of the factory, Sanderson added. The cells will feature wafers made with CubicPV’s transformative Direct Wafer technology, which produces wafers in one step, directly from a molten bath of silicon. The product purportedly delivers the world’s lowest cost of electricity today, while offering a significant reduction in carbon footprint over conventional methods.

“Our Direct Wafer technology is the ideal solution for India’s domestic utility market and Waaree, by choosing this technology over generic methods, is setting the tone for an Indian manufacturing future that makes better use of materials, requires less energy and is defined by high efficiency,” said Frank van Mierlo, CEO of CubicPV. “CubicPV is honored to begin our journey in India with Waaree. The synergy between one of the leading module manufacturers in India and Cubic’s innovation agenda will create value for both companies and the solar industry in India.”

The partnership with CubicPV provides Waaree with a domestic supply line and thus a level of immunity with respect to the logistics challenges and volatile commodity pricing that has defined the import market.

“As an early entrant in the solar industry, Waaree recognizes the value of innovation to our continued leadership position. We believe that CubicPV’s technologies will deliver significant benefit to our customers and to the Indian solar market both immediately and in the long-run. We are proud to bring a module to the market featuring domestically-produced wafers and cells manufactured with a low carbon footprint,” said Hitesh Doshi, chairman and managing director of Waaree.

CubicPV was formed from the merger of US wafer maker 1366 Technologies and Hunt Perovskite Technologies.

In an investment round led by existing investor Fenice Investment Group, green hydrogen electrolyzer provider Ohmium International has secured a $45 million Series B funding round. Existing investors were joined by new investor Energy Transition Ventures. 

The funds are expected to increase Ohmium’s manufacturing capabilities four-fold from 500MW annually to 2GW by the end of the year. The company said its interlocking, modular proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers feature a safer, standardized, flexible, and easy to install and maintain alternative to customized electrolyzers. 

When charged by renewable energy sources, hydrogen is a prospective zero-carbon solution for a wide variety of applications, including iron and steelmaking, ground transport, long-duration dispatchable power, fertilizers, and more.

Ohmium’s Lotus Mark 1 Electrolyzer can produce 6kg per hour at 400 psi. The company said its purity is greater than 99.99%, with a less than 5 parts per million of oxygen present in the final product. It requires 480VAC / 415VAC, 60Hz / 50Hz of power, and is rated to operate between -13 degrees F to 122 degrees F. Each cabinet measures 6′ x 4′ x 6′. It is designed to Designed to UL 2264A standards.

“In a world where renewable power costs are cheaper than even the fuel for fossil power, green hydrogen is poised to transform energy and industrial markets,” said Craig Lawrence, partner, Energy Transition Ventures. 

The modular design means individual electrolyzers can be stacked, which Ohmium said will reduce installation and maintenance costs, while maintaining design flexibility. The company’s stack technology can sustain a differential pressure across the membrane without compromise, a feature that enhances cost-efficacy of operations. 

“The world has been waiting for cost-effective green hydrogen to usher in the hydrogen economy,” said Ahmad Chatila, of Fenice Investment Group and Chairman of Ohmium International. “Ohmium now has the resources and the manufacturing capacity to make it a reality today for customers worldwide.” 

Most hydrogen today is produced with fossil fuels, but the decreased cost of electrolyzers has opened the door for a decarbonized hydrogen economy. 

Ohmium is headquartered in Fremont, California, with manufacturing operations in India. Recently, India unveiled its green hydrogen policy as a step toward meeting the objectives of the National Hydrogen Mission launched by the prime minister last year.  

The National Hydrogen Mission aims to make India a green hydrogen hub, enabling the nation to meet its climate targets while reducing its fossil fuel import bills. It targets the production of 5 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030 and the related development of renewable energy capacity. 

In the US, the Department of Energy (DOE) targets reduced green hydrogen costs in pursuit of climate goals. The launched in 2021, Hydrogen Shot program has a “1-1-1″ goal, targeting costs of $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade. Currently, renewable energy-fueled hydrogen costs about $5 per kilogram, so this target represents a cost reduction of 80% in one decade.

DOE investment in green hydrogen is on the rise. In 2021, it supported $285 million in funding, and in 2022, the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Request included the application for $400 million in funds for green hydrogen development.

Solas Energy Consulting announced it served as key technical advisor to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) for a $500 million investment in BrightNight, LLC. BrightNight is an independent power producer of renewable energy, with operations in the United States, India, Bangladesh, and South-East Asia. 

GIP’s investment included preferred equity and a letter of credit facility. Solas evaluated BrightNight’s hybridized development portfolio which includes solar PV and storage. Solas said it provided due diligence on all aspects of project development, including land/topography, siting, environmental, permitting, resource analysis, interconnection, and project economic modeling. 

GIP’s investment is expected to enable BrightNight, as an independent power producer, to offer a complete service from development through operations. 

Global Infrastructure Partners is a specialist infrastructure investor with approximately $77 billion under management. It owns 46 portfolio companies with combined annual revenues of $40 billion and more than 63,000 employees. The company recently announced the election of Bob Callahan, Lucy Chadwick, and Andrew Paulson as partners of the firm. 

BrightNight has a track record of executing significant utility-scale solar and energy storage projects. It participated in the development of the Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar Farm, a 400MW facility with utility NV Energy as offtaker. At the time, the project was the largest ever built on tribal land and achieved the lowest LCOE in the country at $0.023/kWh. The project was built alongside a retiring coal plant. 

The company also brought the Mount Signal Solar Farm in California to commercial operation, an 800MW cluster of three facilities that generate enough power for over 1 million people during the daytime.

The supply chain problems which helped drive up the cost of solar power equipment last year will ease in 2022, according to Scottish analyst Wood Mackenzie.

A note issued yesterday by the U.S.-owned data company, which highlighted how such issues drove up the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) across the Asia-Pacific region in 2021, saw senior analyst Rishab Shrestha state: “Renewables’ supply chain bottlenecks are expected to ease in 2022 and beyond, and the respective LCOE will return to a declining trend.”

With Chinese polysilicon companies ramping up production facilities, WoodMac said an easing in supply problems, and related cost rises, would reverse a 9% year-on-year rise in the average cost of solar projects across the region recorded last year, to US$0.086/kWh – the first such rise in the history of the region’s solar industry.

The only market not to experience more expensive PV electricity last year was solar superpower China, in part thanks to the zero-tolerance Covid policy which has attracted so much attention in western nations of late. Rampant rises in the cost of fossil fuels in China, domestic solar manufacturing, and the nation’s climate change commitments were also factors, according to Verisk-owned WoodMac.

Steepling rises in fossil fuel costs last year ensured that even with their unusual price premiums, Asia-Pacific solar and onshore wind projects – the latter rising in cost 2%, to US$0.103/kWh – gained ground in their economic business case against gas-fired power projects, which became 46% more costly in the region in 2021, and coal plants, which cost 19% more than in 2020.

While solar and onshore wind facilities are 12-29% cheaper over their project lifetime than fossil fuel equivalents in India, China and Australia, “a significant renewables premium” across the other Asia-Pacific countries ensures such clean power plants are 16% more costly over their operating life than gas and coal generation sites, across the region as a whole.

That situation will be reversed by the end of the decade, according to WoodMac, which predicted solar projects, and to a lesser extent onshore wind sites, will together be 28% cheaper than coal across the Asia-Pacific market in 2030 and will achieve at least cost parity with gas. By that stage, solar and onshore wind will be 50-55% cheaper than coal in India, China and Australia, casting into doubt the efficacy of the successful push by the former two nations to water down a desired global commitment to phase out coal use, at the COP26 climate change talks in Glasgow in November.

With gas-fired generation costs potentially set to be driven up 70-100% by the costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology this decade, according to the analyst, the current 50% price premium of renewables with energy storage against the fossil fuel could be removed by 2030.

KKR, a global investment firm, announced today the launch of Stellar Renewable Power, a new platform that will source, develop, and operate utility-scale solar plants and storage facilities on behalf of KKR’s Asset-Based Finance strategy.

Specifically, Stellar will source renewable investment opportunities through greenfield development and acquisitions of early-stage assets from other developers. Funding for the platform’s activities will come from separate insurance accounts managed by KKR.

Stellar will be led by Vijay Venkatachalam, who previously worked as Chief Financial Officer with SB Energy Global and as Director of Project Finance with SunEdison. In his career, Venkatachalam has led the development of nearly seven gigawatts of utility scale solar capacity in the United States and India.

“Demand for clean power is greater now than ever before and I’m confident that with KKR’s strong backing, Stellar has the right foundation, resources and expertise to create an industry leading renewable energy platform on a global scale,” Venkatachalam said.

According to the company announcement, Stellar plans to open offices in India and Dallas, Texas. The company has not yet shared any specific locations being targeted for development acquisition, sharing that the first order of business is to work with Venkatachalam and fill out the rest of the Stellar Solar team.

From pv magazine Global

Scientists from India’s KPR Institute of Engineering and Technology have developed a new technique to recycle pure silicon from solar cells at the end of their lifecycle.

Unlike other conventional methods to recycle silicon from PV devices, the new technique is not based on the use of highly toxic chemical hydrofluoric acid, which is commonly utilized in the PV industry for both quartz cleaning and wafer etching. In solar module recycling, the corrosive acid is used for separating silicon from the cell by removing the anti-reflecting coating, silver, lead, and p-n junction.

The corrosive acid was replaced by the Indian group with three different chemicals: a 10 M solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was applied to the aluminum layer for five minutes at 63 degrees Celsius; a 6 M solution of nitric acid (HNO₃) was used to remove the silver electrodes and lead; and a solution of 90% phosphoric acid was used to remove the antireflecting coating based on silicon nitride (Si3NA4) for 45 minutes at 70 degrees Celsius.

The outer parts of a solar panel such as glass, ethylene-vinyl acetate glass, copper, steel, aluminum, and plastic were previously removed through thermal degradation.

According to the scientists, the proposed technique is able to deliver recycled silicon with a purity of up to 99.9984%. The recycling cost for 1 kg solar cell with this process is estimated at $68.9 and the total profit after recycling a 1 kg solar cell is calculated to be $185.4. The recovered silicon can be used to manufacture new solar cells or electronic components such as diodes, transistors, and microchips, they explained.

The recycling technique is also said to enable the recovery of aluminum, silver, and lead as aluminum hydroxide, silver chloride, and lead oxide, respectively. It is described in the paper “Recovery of Pure Silicon and Other Materials from Disposed Solar Cells,” published in the International Journal of Photoenergy.

Research on a new type of photocatalyst called a covalent organic framework (COF) has led to significantly increased hydrogen production rates in photocatalysts, which scientists at Shoonlini University said in a published Science Direct article could have implications for clean energy production in the future.

Photocatalysts are materials that absorb energy from light to perform a chemical reaction. Best known among photocatalysts is chlorophyll, a green pigment in plants that turns sunlight into carbohydrates.

In a photocatalytic reaction, light causes electrons to break their bonds and move freely through the catalyst. The excited electrons then react with the raw materials of a chemical reaction, and produce a desired end product.

A priority by the alternative energy research field is to use photocatalysts to convert solar energy into fuel, a process called “solar-to-fuel production.”

The current performance of these materials has been limited due to poor light absorption, fast photogenerated electron-hole recombination, and inappropriate active sites. However, the development of COFs has worked to address some of these limitations.

COFs are able to add special molecules called “functional groups” to their structure, which provide a way around some of the limitations of traditional photocatalysts. COFs have higher chemical stability, controllable porosity, and strong electron delocalization, which makes them extra stable.

Strong electron delocalization means that unlike in semiconductor catalysts, excited electrons recombine midway infrequently, leading to more excited electrons for the chemical reaction.

COFs consist of organic molecules, and can be tailored to suit various applications. The modifiable porosity and stability of the material make it particularly well suited for fuel production, as well as in carbon dioxide conversion.

The researchers said COFs have the ability to convert CO2 into methane gas, providing a dual benefit of fuel production and carbon reduction. COFs can also be used in nitrogen fixation processes, plastics production, and the storage of gases.

A new class of COF, covalent triazine frameworks (CTF) are currently at the cutting edge of hydrogen production research. This new material has been shown to produce 20-50 times the hydrogen that traditional graphitic photocatalysts make, making it a potential option for future fuel production.

COF-based photocatalysts are still in an early stage of development, and at this time do not produce power as efficiently as semiconductors. However, their unique properties and diversity of structure make them promising candidates for future solar-to-fuel research.

WAAREE Energies, the largest module manufacturer in India, has completed the delivery of 300+ MW solar modules for Aquamarine, a 250MW solar photovoltaic project that is part of the first phase of Westlands Solar Park (WSP) in California’s San Joaquin Valley, between Sacramento and San Francisco.

Specifically, WAAREE delivered 385Wp and 390Wp Mono PERC Solar PV modules for installation, with some of the modules expected for use in other installations within Westlands Solar Park, as the delivery capacity exceeds Aquamarine’s capacity.

As for the installation, the panels will be installed on steel posts at a height of 8 to 10 feet above the ground on a fixed-tilt system. There is set to be a short turnaround between delivery and installation, as Aquamarine is expected to be fully operational by fall 2021.

The Aquamarine project is owned by CMI group, and has one power purchase agreement (PPA) in place for 50 MW of capacity with Valley Clean Energy Alliance, a locally-governed electricity provider for the California cities of Davis, Woodland, Winters and unincorporated portions of Yolo County. The project also has 75 MW in place with the city of Santa Clara, and another PPA of undisclosed capacity with Anaheim Public Utility. Additional PPAs are being pursued for the remainder of the project’s capacity.

From pv magazine 10/2020

In 2019, PowerChina installed 2.5 GW of PV to sail to the top of IHS Markit’s global EPC providers ranking, from fourth position in 2018. This was made possible by installing 1 GW in China, another 1 GW in Vietnam, and several projects in Latin America.

In second position we find inverter supplier Sungrow, which took a 6% share of the Chinese market as it continued to grow its EPC business. Following PowerChina and Sungrow are Prodiel and Sterling and Wilson, thanks to leading regional positions in Latin America and Africa and the Middle East, respectively. Combined, these four EPC providers installed 8 GW of PV in 2019, each taking a 2% share of the global EPC market.

Large projects contributed to greater market shares among the biggest companies. More than 140 PV parks larger than 100 MW were completed in 2019, representing 30% of the global PV market (excluding residential systems). In 2018, parks larger than 100 MW counted for less than one-quarter of non-residential PV additions.

In the three largest non-residential PV markets – China, the United States and India – we see local companies dominating the EPC rankings in 2019. An 11% year-on-year decline in PV additions in China contributed to consolidation among EPC providers in this traditionally fragmented market. Of the 29 GW of non-residential PV added in 2019, the largest EPCs – Sungrow, PowerChina and TBEA Xinjiang Sun Oasis – installed 13%, up from 9% in 2018. As we project China to add more PV in 2020 than in 2019, these providers’ market shares are likely to be diluted again.

EPC opportunities in the US and beyond

In the United States, the five largest EPCs installed 27% of new non-residential PV capacity in 2019. At 10% market share, Swinerton Renewable Energy maintained its position as the preferred EPC contractor in the country. First Solar and Cypress Creek Renewables, both among the top five companies in 2019, have stated that they will exit the EPC segment. This creates opportunities for established local EPCs, as well as for the emerging group of international companies that are eyeing the growing U.S. PV market.

In the highly price sensitive Indian PV market, the top five integrators installed 37% of PV plants in 2019. Local EPC/developer Azure Power, which is owned by foreign investors, took the lead in the country. As India’s PV market risks being cut in half in 2020, as a result of Covid-19, further consolidation among the main EPCs is likely. Of these three major markets in 2019, only the United States is likely to see an increasing participation of international EPCs, as margins are more attractive.

Outside the three largest markets, we observe a mix of international and local EPC providers in the top positions. Australia has proved difficult to operate in, illustrated by the fall of local EPC and former market leader RCR Tomlinson two years ago. As many active third-party providers steer away from the PV segment in Australia, international developers increasingly perform in-house EPC using local contractors. More fertile ground for third-party EPC providers developed in 2019 in both Spain and Vietnam. Spanish EPCs dominated the country’s 5 GW of installations in 2019, with the top five providers supplying a stunning 77% of the market. In Vietnam, the five largest EPCs supplied a third of the market. This market that grew from close to nothing to install 6 GW last year, attracted a mix of Chinese, Japanese, European and Indian EPC providers.

On the other end of the spectrum, Germany is consistently a local and fragmented market. Small system sizes, generally below 10 MW, contribute to a market where the ten largest EPCs do not exceed a fifth of the 3.5 GW market. Only one company, Enerparc, has succeeded in gaining significant market share, installing 9% of Germany’s non-residential PV systems in 2019. The company thrives on its success as a developer, including winning a large portion of Germany’s PV tenders.

2020

2020, as you know, is somewhat different. From the supply chain hiccups in the first quarters, to lockdowns and safety measures, many projects have been delayed. Projects are still at risk of delays depending on the evolution of the pandemic. Additionally, the recent increase in module prices complicates procurement for EPCs that build projects with tight margins.

Overall, we project close to 100 GW of non-residential PV systems to be added in 2020, down from 107 GW in 2019, which is more optimistic than we initially thought back in April. The question is how market shares will be distributed among the EPC providers. Who will meet deadlines, and who has renegotiated terms? As companies keep quiet, we eagerly await 2021 to dig into the details on projects completed in 2020.

***

Josefin Berg is an analyst at IHS Markit

The pv magazine jobs column covers executive and boardroom moves in solar, storage, cleantech, utilities and venture capital. This week is heavy on personnel moves at project developers and utilities.

***

Sean Kiernan, formerly the executive director at ReNew Americas, joined project developer 8minute Solar Energy as chief development officer. 8minute also added Brian Grummel, previously with Greensmith, as senior engineer.

Mark Abrams, most recently director of sales at SolarEdge, is now general manager for the Western U.S. at Sunnova Energy.

Ohio utility FirstEnergy promoted CFO Steve Strah to take over as president for Charles Jones, who continues as CEO.

Jonathan Moore is now general manager of Solar Medix, New York, a photovoltaic installation O&M company.

Rudolph “Ben” Rodriguez was promoted to VP at CAM Solar, a PV and storage installer with service territories in Texas and Colorado

Michael Puckett, previously with PG&E, has joined NextEra Energy Resources as manager of  business development — C&I origination.

David Rodriguez was promoted to technical program manager, innovation, in energy storage, microgrids and fleet electrification at Enel X. In 2018, demand response pioneer EnerNOC was rebranded into Enel X which also markets EV chargers and solutions for smart homes and cities.

Ayah Alfawaris was promoted to energy policy, marketing and business development manager at Wilson Power Solutions.

Chris Varrone is now managing director at Pickwick Capital Partners — helping renewable energy and energy storage companies with strategy and financing.

Dawei Kuo is now a development engineer at solar roof company GAF Energy. He was most recently a packaging engineer at Alta Devices where he developed the assembly and lamination process of solar modules for aerospace applications. GAF Energy’s president Martin DeBono told pv magazine: “The industry will evolve from rack-mounted to BIPV.”

Watt Fuel Cell builds solid oxide fuel cells for residential and mobile applications. The firm named Morgan O’Brien as chairman of the board. O’Brien previously served as CEO of Peoples Natural Gas Company and Duquesne Light Company. According to Pitchbook, Watt Fuel Cell raised $18.8 million in its most recent funding round. Here’s an updated list of profitable fuel cell firms.

Solaria, a provider of high-efficiency solar panels, named Tony Alvarez, former senior VP at Cypress Semiconductor, to the role of CEO, and Howard Wenger, former president of SunPower Systems, to the role of president. Suvi Sharma, Solaria founder, will keep a board seat and continue to be involved in product and growth strategy.

From pv magazine Germany

Last year, the world added 114.9 GW of photovoltaic systems, the third year in a row that figure has been over 100 GW, according to the just published preliminary IEA PVPS report “Snapshot of Global PV Markets 2020.”

That’s a 12% increase over the previous year and brings the world’s cumulative photovoltaic peak output to 629 GW as of the end of 2019.

At 30.1 GW in 2019, China was still by far the largest photovoltaic market in the world, but that market declined for the third year in a row.

Continental divide

By continent, The IEA PVPS report places the EU in second place with a total of 16 GW of new photovoltaic systems. The U.S. was in third place with a newly installed PV output of 13.3 GW, ahead of India with 9.9 GW and Japan with 7 GW. Vietnam followed with 4.8 GW, Spain with 4.4 GW and Germany with 3.9 GW. The top 10 is rounded out by Australia, Ukraine and South Korea with more than 3 GW each in 2019

Asia holds the continental lead with 57 percent of the world market — as countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia have compensated for the market declines in China and India.

The U.S. remains the largest market in North and South America, followed by Brazil which added 2 GW and Mexico with 1 GW.

Spain made a comeback to lead the EU with 4.4 GW, followed by Germany at 3.9 GW, with the Netherlands adding 2.4 GW of new solar equipment, and France adding 900 MW. The report notes an increase of around 600 MW for Italy and 544 MW for Belgium.

Outside the EU, there were also positive developments, particularly in Eastern European countries. Ukraine saw demand of 3.5 GW, Hungary installed 900 MW and Poland energized 800 MW. Europe as a whole had a global share of around 18% of new solar.

Cumulatively

In the ranking for most installed photovoltaics, China leads, by a lot, with 204.7 GW — followed by the U.S. with 75.9 GW and Japan with 63 GW. Germany is in fourth place with 49.2 GW, followed by India with 42.8 GW and Italy with 20.8 GW.

IEA PVPS specifies the cumulative installed photovoltaic output in the EU at 131.7 GW.

The report sees falling storage prices, the spread of EVs and commercial green hydrogen as drivers of solar growth. According to the research, the contribution of photovoltaics to global electricity needs is just under 3%.

The IEA PVPS report can be downloaded here.

Chinese module prices are expected to rise 12.5% due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Existing inventory is expected to keep this price rise in check to some degree. It’s unclear when prices will return to previous levels, as modules are expected to be roughly 4¢/kWh higher than estimates even through Q4. Source: Power Technology

Tesla watchers expect the company to announce a new benchmark for its batteries that, if successful, would take its models to a long-sought Holy Grail — side-by-side cost parity with gasoline vehicles. The anticipation among Tesla’s feverish fans is around a big unveil next month on “Battery Day,” where they expect CEO Elon Musk to announce that he either has or will soon achieve the battery equivalent of the two-hour marathon — the $100 per kWh lithium-ion battery. In January, Musk told analysts that what he had to say “will blow your mind. It blows my mind.” Source: Medium

Powerhome has partnered with Generac to offer customers an energy package that includes Generac battery storage components and generators with any solar panel installation. The system is the PWRcell, a scalable battery solution that can store between 8.6 kWh and 17.1 kWh of energy. Source: Powerhome

Duke Energy is donating $150,000 to help low-income customers in North Carolina who are struggling to pay their utility bills during the COVID-19 crisis. The funds will be provided to approximately 600 households through the company’s Energy Neighbor Fund and Share the Warmth programs. Outside of this financial relief, the company has suspended disconnections due to nonpayment, waived late-payment charges and waived returned payment/check fees, among others. Source: Duke Energy Foundation

Seychelles readies the world’s largest salt-water floating solar plant: Located in the Indian Ocean archipelago, and with a population of just 25,400, Seychelles is putting together the world’s largest floating solar power plant on saltwater. According to the IRENA energy agency, the country currently has an installed 0.9 MW of solar capacity. The 5 MW solar PV plant will use 13,500 solar panels, deployed across 40,000 square meters of water. Construction will begin in July on a lagoon on Mahé, the main island of the archipelagic nation. Source: ZME Science

GoingSolar.com is a comprehensive list of solar rebates state-by-state along with other stats to help individuals maximize their benefits of switching to solar.

Tesla has advertised for solar and energy storage project managers based in Shanghai, as it looks to expand its energy business into China. It’s the first time the California-based automaker has looked to hire for such roles in China. Tesla installed 530 MWh of energy storage in Q4 2019, beating out the previous quarter’s 477 MWh by 11%. Tesla also installed 54 MW of solar in Q4, up 26% from Q3’s 43 MW.  Source: The New York Times, Tesla quarterly report

The Virginia Clean Economy Act now heads to Governor Northam after state lawmakers gave it the final passage on Friday. The act plans to eliminate 100% of harmful carbon emissions by 2045 and instead, invest in expanded wind generation, solar and energy storage. Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association said, ” By 2030, the bill will create nearly 30,000 solar jobs in the Commonwealth and generate billions of dollars of private investment, all while prioritizing solar access for low-income communities.” Dominion Virgina is the state’s largest utility. Source: WHSV, SEIA

Solar turns vicious water-energy-climate cycle into virtuous loop. The International Water Management Institute has launched the Solar Irrigation for Agricultural Resilience project. The new project aims to replace diesel-powered irrigation pumps with groundwater-responsive solar irrigation systems throughout Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Source: pv magazine international

Oil and gas majors have made forays into solar power and renewable energy over the past decades but it always seemed more like public relations than full-on commitment.

That might be changing.

Reluctant oil efforts into solar and renewables

The history of photovoltaic commercialization was launched, in part, by Exxon in the 1970s. Atlantic Richfield’s efforts in solar manufacturing and solar power plants were eventually sold to Siemens in the 1980s. (This glosses over a lot of history and solar heroes.)

Japan’s oil producer Showa Shell Sekiyu recently merged with Japanese oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan, changing the ownership of thin-film PV builder Solar Frontier.

Shell and Oman’s sovereign wealth fund have invested in concentrated solar power in order to better extract fossil fuels by “heating a cubic mile of earth” to free stubborn reserves with enhanced-oil recovery.

Every few years, Exxon and J. Craig Venter of Synthetic Genomics issue a joint proclamation about progress in biofuels derived from algae. Venter gets funded, Exxon gets green cred, and we are once again reminded that algae oil is the fuel of the future.

Oil and gas firms getting serious about solar

Judging by recent efforts from Total and Shell, it appears that oil and gas firms are seeing the writing on the wall when it comes to climate change, and perhaps the obligations of their social contract. They are getting serious about solar power.

Oil and gas major Total acquired a 50% stake in Indian conglomerate Adani Group’s solar business for $510 million, according to a release.

Adani has a portfolio of 2,148 MW of installed solar capacity and 172 MW of installed wind capacity, along with more than 2 GW under construction. According to Total, all the projects benefit from nearly 25-year power purchase agreements with national and regional electricity distributors.

Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani said in a statement:“The investment reinforces the immense potential in India’s renewable energy sector.

Total forecasts that its low-carbon operations could account for 15% to 20% of its sales by 2040. Currently Total’s low-carbon power generation capacity is nearly 7 GW, with 3 GW coming from renewable sources, according to the company.

Total envisions India’s solar capacity growing from 81 GW in 2019 to 225 GW in 2022.

Total is a also majority stake holder in high-efficiency solar leader SunPower and has a well-funded low carbon-focused venture arm.

Tom Heggarty, principal analyst with Wood Mackenzie, said that the Adani investment was Total’s sixth investment in renewable power including acquisitions of solar PV and wind assets in France, Australia, Brazil and Egypt.

Total already had a foothold in the Indian solar PV market through its joint venture with EDF Renewables, with over 200 MW under ownership, along with PPAs for an additional 700 MW of generation.

Shell’s first large-scale solar power plant

Renew Economy notes that Shell, like other oil majors around the globe is making “slow but significant moves into renewable energy development and generation.” It is preparing to become a major electricity utility, and has acquired ERM Power, a large electricity retailer serving C&I customers in Australia. Shell also owns a 49% stake in Australian solar developer ESCO Pacific.

Last year, Shell Energy became the sole off-taker of a 200-MW California solar project, the Sandrini Solar Park near Bakersfield, California which is expected to be operational in 2022, at an estimated investment of more than $200 million.

Shell acquired German-based energy storage company sonnen last year.

Valentina Kretzschmar, director of corporate research at Wood Mackenzie, said, “The energy transition will have an impact on every single oil and gas player.”

From pv magazine 01/2020

Blazing growth in the USA

2019 was be the best year for solar in the United States since the ITC-distorted year of 2016. It’s a solid annual growth rate of about 21% that gets the United States to 12.7 GW in 2019.

The American market seems to have absorbed the tariffs on solar modules and the resultant higher prices. Nevertheless, the United States still has some of the highest solar costs in the world.

It’s the utility and residential sectors that drive the blazing growth, while the non-residential sector continues to be a laggard, hobbled by policy reform. Residential solar had a record 712 MW third quarter, driven by consumers looking for resilience in the face of grid outages with solar paired with storage, according to Wood Mackenzie. Mandated new-build solar is also a factor.

The contracted utility-scale solar pipeline is 45.5 GW – the highest it has ever been in the history of U.S. utility-scale solar, according to WoodMackenzie, driven by “utilities and developers looking to safe-harbor enough equipment for as much capacity as possible under the 30% ITC.”

There’s also more geographical diversity in solar’s U.S. deployment, led by California, Florida and Texas.

BloombergNEF’s conservative forecast is a modest 9.5 GW in 2019, growing to 12.6 GW in 2020, and 13.6 GW in 2021. Wood Mackenzie is sticking with its previous 2019 U.S. solar forecast of 13 GW (a 23% annual growth rate), very much in line with the optimistic BloombergNEF forecast.

Eric Wesoff

Vikram Solar is a solar engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm in India. Their projects run the full gamut of size – 18.5 kW rooftop, 1 MW floating, 2.15 MW commercial rooftop, 5 MW as part of a nationwide defense system hardening portfolio, and just for good measure – a 200 MW utility scale whale. Their rooftop portfolio consists of greater than 500 installations at 250+ sites totalling 27 MW installed, and 25 MW+ in the pipeline. The utility scale portfolio is just greater than 1 GW, in stages from commissioned to under development.

Vikram Solar is also a solar panel manufacturer. Currently, they have about 1.1 GW of annual manufacturing capacity located in India, with an expectation to be at 2 GW by the middle of 2020. The company opened an office in Framingham, Massachusetts in February 2018, has been in Germany for a decade, and runs its international module business – USA included – via offices in Singapore.

The Vikram Group has greater than 40 years of business behind them, starting in the tea processing industry, eventually joining the textile manufacturing field, and most recently the solar business since 2006.

pv magazine USA sat down with them while at Solar Power International in Salt Lake City, as they were announcing three solar modules available for the US market. The company’s product specification pages are located here, with the three USA products noted below:

• SOMERA P-Duplex Frameless Bifacial – 72 cells, module ranging from 375 to 400 Wp, 30-year linear power warranty, available January 2020
• SOMERA P-Duplex Framed Bifacial Half-Cell – 144 half-cells, transparent back sheet, modules ranging from 390 to 420 Wp, 30-year linear power warranty, available March 2020
• SOMERA Grand Ultima Max Half-Cell – 150 Mono PERC half-cells, modules ranging from 405 to 425 Wp, 27-year linear power warranty, available January 2020

When asked about the longer than average warranty, Ravi Vaidya – VP of Global Market – at Vikram Solar, noted that all modules are individually tracked, so problems can be traced, helping fix issues at the source quickly. That the group’s EPC services build with their own modules also gives them additional insight to field issues.

Like many groups they work with DNV GL testing their bill of materials – which are available upon request and a signed NDA. Recently, lessons of automation have driven gains. The company uses at least some of Meyer Burger’s manufacturing lines for product headed to the US markets, and thinly laid out bus bars have been a part of that relationship.

And just for good measure, because it seems like every solar manufacturer has this picture as part of their marketing material – here are technicians spot checking a completed solar module:

From pv magazine India.

By Uma Gupta

Since September 2016 India has sought consultations with the United States concerning subsidies paid to energy projects in various states which included American-made components. India argued such incentives accorded less favorable treatment to Indian solar imports, denying them an equal opportunity of competing in the U.S. market.

After dialogue failed to resolve the row, the dispute settlement body at the World Trade Organization (WTO) established a panel to examine India’s complaint.

States including Washington, California, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware and Minnesota have all offered incentives to PV projects featuring American-made components. Washington provides incentives for customer-generated electricity produced using solar inverters and modules made in the state. California provides a 20% incentive payment for the installation of distributed generation resources from a California supplier or generation and energy storage equipment manufactured in the state.

Unfair treatment

The WTO panel yesterday announced it had found U.S. incentives gave an advantage for the use of domestic products which amounted to less favorable treatment for similar imported products. The decision will come at an awkward time for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been busy lambasting India ahead of this weekend’s G20 global trade gathering in Japan and demanding it remove trade measures against U.S. imports.

In return the United States had sought to impose similar measures on India citing the nation’s failure to comply with a WTO decision to remove inconsistent measures for implementing its National Solar Mission policy. India’s policies, the U.S. officials claimed, had prompted American solar exports to the nation to tumble more than 90%.

Those retaliatory measures by the U.S. triggered a wave of support for India from the EU as well as Brazil, China and Japan. The consensus appeared to be that the retaliatory measures were unjustified.

Sungrow is making big moves in the U.S. market. The inverter maker has already supplied some landmark projects in the United States – such as the largest solar projects under construction in Wyoming and Washington State and the biggest plant online in Rhode Island, as well as recently shipping inverters to the 200 MW Techren 2 solar project in Nevada.

And despite the Trump Administration’s tariffs on Chinese products including inverters, Sungrow has a goal of shipping around 1.5 GW of inverters to the United States this year, a 250% growth over its 2018 shipment levels.

The company is getting close, and told pv magazine that it currently holds more than 1 GW of inverter contracts for 2019 delivery. “As we are now in the middle of Q1 there are still some bookings coming in,” says Zach Ward, the head of Sungrow’s North American division.

Dealing with the tariffs

Thanks to proactive planning, Ward says Sungrow has been able to avoid paying the 10% Section 301 tariffs on the product it has shipped to the U.S. market. He notes that the company has been closely monitoring the political situation in the United States and started to react when the Section 201 tariffs on solar cells and modules were imposed.

“Immediately, when the first tariff was mentioned – when it started with the panels – we took all risk for delivery,” notes Ward. “There is one thing that financiers don’t like, it is risk. We needed to take that off the table.”

Sungrow’s next move was to set up a 3 GW factory in India, which opened in July 2018 – well before the Section 301 tariffs on inverters were announced. “We have multiple manufacturing centers, but the UL products were being made in China, so we had to move those over to a UL facility that we had in India,” explains Ward.

He further revealed that since December, all of Sungrow’s string inverters for the U.S. market were coming out of its India factory, and that it will be soon rolling out central inverters as well. While some inverters for larger projects like Techren 2 have been shipped from China, those were delivered in December – before the Section 301 tariffs took effect.

Ward also notes that many of the components that go into Sungrow’s inverters come from Europe, which made it easier to shift the assembly of these products from China to India.

Future business

Either this week or next week U.S. and Chinese authorities are expected to reveal whether or not they have come to a compromise on trade matters, and if they do not the Section 301 tariffs are scheduled to move to 25%. As for whether or not Sungrow expects a resolution, Ward observes that “I don’t even think Trump or Xi (Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping) can answer that question accurately.”

But either way, the company says that it expects both growth in the U.S. market and in its share of that market. To support this, Sungrow has set up a new service center in Tempe, Arizona.

One of the areas that has Ward particularly excited is energy storage. He notes that Sungrow has shipped inverters for over 100 megawatt-hours of battery storage projects so far, and among the five products that it plans to launch this year, two are new inverter products for energy storage installations.

“Despite all of this trade war and tariffs and all of the things that we are going through, Sungrow is still making a significant investment in North America,” Ward told pv magazine. “We feel like this is one of the largest markets globally, and we want to be the biggest manufacturer globally.”

2018 was a difficult year for the global solar industry. The imposition of no less than four sets of solar-related import tariffs in the United States, the “5/31” policy shift in China and duties in India made for one of the most challenging policy environments in recent memory.

All of this was reflected in solar corporate funding, which fell 24% in 2018 to $9.7 billion, according to the latest report by Mercom Capital. But this fall was not the worst the industry has seen, and Mercom’s 2018 Solar Funding and M&A Report also gives insights into where this capital is going within the industry.

In short, the report documents the movement of capital downstream. Downstream companies walked away with 91% of the total venture capital funding in the industry, with only slivers for solar technology companies and service providers.

In fact the sums of money raised by individual downstream companies – $200 million for Cypress Creek, $174 million for GreenYellow and $154 million for Amp – are each much larger than the total funding for areas like thin film technology, which investors bet on heavily seven years ago, with most seeing their money vaporize.

Projects changing hands

Perhaps reflecting the challenges seen by the U.S. solar market in the wake of Section 201 and other tariffs, securitization stayed at a steady volume of $1.4 billion in 2018, and large-scale funding remained at $14 billion, with European investment banks showing themselves to be the biggest lenders during this period.

But the real activity was seen in project mergers and acquisitions. The numbers given by Mercom support what we at pv magazine USA have been reporting: that solar projects are becoming accepted even by more conservative investors such as pension funds and insurance companies as a good buy, and that the money chasing these projects exceeds the available projects for sale.

In fact 2018 was a record year for solar projects changing hands, with 82 projects totaling 29 GW being bought and sold.

“About 100 GW of large-scale projects have been acquired since 2010, a reflection of how far solar has come as an asset class,” notes Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu. “Quality solar projects are now a mature, attractive investment opportunity around the world.”

The China exception

But this does not mean that no one is investing in upstream technology. Much of the global solar manufacturing capacity is in China, where investments are inherently less visible.

“So much is state-controlled,” Prabhu told pv magazine. “It is not transparent if it is coming from state-owned banks.”

Also, like everyone else Mercom Capital does not have insight into investments made in private companies that are not disclosed, and Mercom’s report only tracks funding from external sources – not solar companies’ internal spending.

This is notable, given that despite a general trend of low investment in R&D by Chinese PV makers, LONGi is investing more into research and development, both as a portion of its income and in raw dollar terms, than any Western company. This included more than $100 million invested in R&D in the first six months of 2018.

Furthermore, the money for LONGi’s massive expansion of ingot and wafer factories – with plans for 45 GW of wafer capacity by the end of 2020 – is coming from somewhere. The same can be said to a lesser degree of the plans by mono crystalline silicon wafer maker Zhonghuan, as well as the investments in a massive joint venture factory between Zhonghuan, SunPower and Dongfang.

So more than the investment moving entirely downstream, we are really talking about is two distinct environments for solar investment – China, and the rest of the world.

It’s that time of year when people are reflecting on the past year and thinking about what the new year will bring.

Here to talk about 2018’s “Unpopular Solar Opinions” (ironically a pretty popular Twitter thread) is Jenny Chase, BloombergNEF’s Head of Solar Analysis and this month’s featured #Solar100 leader.

Chase has her degree in Physics from Cambridge and has dedicated her career to solar market research. Having thus studied solar’s history for almost fifteen years, Chase knows solar’s past, and we think she’s one of the most qualified people to discuss solar’s big picture trends and future.

—

BEFORE BLOOMBERG

Richard Matsui: You’re known in the industry for your solar analysis work through Bloomberg New Energy Finance, but can you tell us about your path to BNEF, and how you ended up in renewables?

Jenny Chase: To be honest, there isn’t much of a story before BNEF. I was one of the many students who wanted to do something for the environment, and I thought energy was a good bet. I went to study physics, but I wasn’t actually that good at physics, so I chose an internship with a slightly unusual chap, Michael Liebreich. He hired me, the company was reasonably successful, and then in late 2009, Bloomberg bought us and we became Bloomberg. Our first location was a very startup-y office in London—it was a big celebration when we first got a kettle.

Richard Matsui: [laughs] That kettle story is relatable. You mentioned that you wanted to do something for the environment. What prompted that interest?

Jenny Chase: My parents are kind of hippies, and when I was a kid I read a lot of news articles, the New Scientist, and a lot science fiction. Old science fiction focused on environmental awareness. For as long as I can remember, I thought that the most important problem to solve was going to be environmental degradation and climate change.

Richard Matsui: What were some of your favorite books back then?

Jenny Chase: I very much love Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and Isaac Asmiov’s work. Although Asimov is best known for robots and early space fiction, he had a deep if matter-of-fact environmental consciousness to his work. A lot of science fiction includes terraforming and other fundamental changes to the way things are. It’s an entire genre based on the idea that we can change our world, on purpose or by accident, and that could be good or could be very, very bad. It is much harder to be a climate denier when you just finished reading a smart novel set during the terraforming of Mars.

Richard Matsui: As someone who also grew up reading science fiction, I can definitely relate to that. Shifting back to the “startup-y office in London,” any other anecdotes that capture what it was like to work for NEF in the early days?

Jenny Chase: A couple of years in we brought in a chap called Chris Greenwood as a manager, and because I’m generally totally oblivious to anything that’s outside my sphere of immediate interest (solar), I wasn’t expecting him in the office. But one morning I came in and this guy was washing all the dishes in our absolutely filthy sink. Chris turned out to have a lot more to him than just being able to wash the dishes, but the fact that he didn’t know what to do because nobody else was in, so he cleaned up, was amazing. He had a history of management consulting and he really brought us to the next level professionally. But the first time I met him, he was washing our cups.

Richard Matsui: That’s what you need in the early days especially—smart people who just aren’t afraid of that kind of work. It speaks volumes that so much of your early team is still there. You seem to still be very tightly knit, which is impressive from a company culture standpoint.

Jenny Chase: Michael [Liebreich] said he wanted it to be an “Asshole-Free-Zone,” and I think he was successful. We’re very proud of our company culture.

UNPOPULAR SOLAR OPINIONS: A DEEP DIVE

Flattish Prices in Solar Tenders

Richard Matsui: You have a great “Unpopular Opinions on Solar” thread on Twitter. I wanted to ask you to expand on a few of those. To start, can you expand on #13? “We’re in for a couple of years of flattish prices in solar tenders, generally $25-35/MWh in sunny risky countries with a few below in sunny stable ones. Many Indian projects which bid low prices won’t be built at those prices.” I think this is a more controversial one than some people might realize.

Jenny Chase: I think costs will carry on coming down, but not necessarily as much as people  assumed they would when the bids were made. We’ve seen no new record in 2018 in India, where the record still stands at 2440 rupees $34.8) per megawatt hour for Indian vendors set in May 2017. They’re not inflation indexed, that’s what makes them so difficult to understand! Inflation in India is really high so the cost of capital is high, but these tariffs are fixed.

Richard Matsui: Fair point. Given the bidding dynamics, the expected rate of cost reduction obviously matters, but so does the market perception of that cost reduction.

Jenny Chase: Exactly. And we’ve already seen in the intent that we’ve seen no new record for Indian bidders that, in the past year, that’s at or below $34.8 per megawatt hour. When we try to estimate the assumptions that Indian developers must have made on capex, capacity factor, operating costs and financing costs to expect a profit at these bids, we struggle to use realistic figures. One of the problems is that these tariffs are fixed for 25 years, not inflation indexed, so as India’s inflation is high the value in later years will be much lower than it is today. I honestly still have difficulty understanding how they expect to make money, and think it may be to do with tax treatment that I do not understand.

Richard Matsui: The Indian solar market historically featured an abundance of solar developers that are both aggressive and relatively inexperienced. The resulting lack of pricing discipline has been problematic for the market, and has resulted in projects promised but not delivered. You mentioned that there hasn’t been a new record low bid in the last 12 months, which suggests pricing discipline. What’s enforcing that discipline?

Jenny Chase: I think developers are pulling back a little bit because some of the more extreme projects have not been built. The latest bids out of Gujarat are higher than previous ones. But at the same time, the state government is saying “Well, you can bid lower than that, set a new record!” Meanwhile, banks are not super willing to lend, although they can be fairly sure they’ll get their debt back. Equity holders are hurt first when projects underperform, not debt holders.

Curtailment: Feature or a Bug?

Can you say more about #6? “Curtailment (cutoff when the grid can’t take all production) of solar is going to be a widespread phenomenon. It’s a feature, not necessarily a bug.”

Jenny Chase: I think we’re starting to see a clash between the engineering view of the world, where efficiency is very important, and the financier view of the world (which is probably more realistic these days), which is that if it’s cheap, it doesn’t actually matter if you generate too much. The engineer is horrified by the idea of throwing away excess power, but by doing so you can help the grid out quite a lot. The problem with solar is that it’s very peaky. You generate a lot of power between about 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and then it tails off quite quickly and this peak and this ramp rate can be a problem for the grid.  However, solar is so cheap now that if you can get halfway decent prices for off-peak power, it can make sense to simply throw away some of the peak overproduction.

Curtailing solar is also pretty easy from a technical perspective. For example, one of the issues with the California gas market is that some gas plants don’t shut down in times of peak power production because it takes them too long to ramp up again. With solar, you basically just have to tell the inverter to move the system voltage and current away from its maximum power point. . By curtailing relatively small amounts of solar production, you can massively reduce the amount of ramping that the rest of the grid has to do. You can possibly reduce wear and tear and even demand for other components of the grid, and without curtailing more than a few percent of total generation, which is really cheap anyway.

The PV Project Stakeholder Landscape

Richard Matsui: In #19, you wrote, “Operation and maintenance in desert environments will prove more challenging than PV project stakeholders expect.” Can you say more about what you’re thinking there?

Jenny Chase: I’m talking about some of these super low solar power price bids, particularly in the Middle East, which are so low that they must assume very cheap O&M. . I don’t think anyone has a lot of long-term experience managing photovoltaic systems in hot, dry, dusty environments on a shoestring budget. Some of the PPA prices, if you try and back-calculate what they must be paying, there’s not a lot of margin there. I think that dust will be a little more problematic than they think it will be.

Richard Matsui: Right. Everyone wants to bite at the gigawatt solar project.

Jenny Chase: Because of the way the solar market works at the moment, if you don’t bid beyond what every sensible person would be comfortable with, you don’t get a project and you don’t have a job.

Richard Matsui: That’s the brutal reality of it. We’ve been asked to quote the Solar Revenue Put for a couple of projects in the agricultural heartland of California, which is very dusty. And we’re seeing sponsors take—in our view—an aggressive view on soiling losses that isn’t substantiated by historical performance data. To your point, we understand why they’re doing it. They have to be aggressive to win, but some of these bidding behaviors don’t seem sustainable.

Jenny Chase: Absolutely. You never want to say, “Sure, we’re going to lose on this project.” But I would be a tiny bit concerned about that if I were them.

Richard Matsui: I think it’s interesting that the sentiment in the solar market now mirrors sentiment in the public equities market, where “everyone knows” that the market is overheated and that a correction is inevitable. What do you think happens in the next three to five years—will there be a blow up? 

Jenny Chase: Well, it might not be as spectacular as a blow-up. If your investors are expecting five percent of return on equity and they actually get minus one percent, what can they actually do?

Richard Matsui: Well, they could sell, right? They could theoretically sell at a discount and write off the loss. There’s a class of nimble investors like Generate Capital that would be glad to pick up distressed assets. 

“Losing” vs Waiting for a Bargain Price

Richard Matsui: #3 is the last one I’d like to talk about specifically: “Countries that have built little solar to date are not “losing” to high-solar countries. They wisely waited for a bargain on price!” I read that and thought, “That is a great counterintuitive perspective.” You’re right. But a couple things that came to mind: One is that Germany did the whole world a favor by signing up for solar at €0.50 a kilowatt-hour for 25 years and taking a multi-billion dollar hit. I mean, would any of us in solar have the jobs that we do today if it wasn’t for them?

Jenny Chase: [Laughs] Yeah, I am super grateful to the Germans for giving me my job.

Richard Matsui: If I’m going to take the opposite side of the argument, which is hard, I would argue that while the Germans didn’t get the upstream manufacturing businesses that they thought they would get, there’s also a number of German renewable energy developers that are based in Germany because it is the birthplace of our entire global market.

Jenny Chase: While it’s true that there are some fantastic German companies that wouldn’t be there if the market hadn’t started in Germany, most are in project development or EPC, where the problem is that the barriers to entry are fairly low. It’s difficult for developers and engineers to take huge, long-term leading market positions.

Richard Matsui: That’s fair.

Jenny Chase: I admit that was more driven by the other side of the equation, which is countries that are saying, “We are only number 89 in solar capacity!” And to that I say, “Who bloody cares? Build it now!” We’re seeing really dramatic price falls – module makers are arguing about cents per watt rather than dollars per watt, so now is a better time to build solar now than at any point in the last ten years for a country. Next year might be slightly better, but now’s not bad.

Richard Matsui: It’s true. Of these unpopular opinions, which has been the most unpopular or controversial?

Jenny Chase: That’s a good question. I’ve actually been surprised over how little pushback I’ve gotten on any of these. It’s possibly because I muted all the nuclear people who just ask, “What about nuclear? What about nuclear? You should talk about nuclear more.”

Possibly the most controversial: #27 “Getting to 100% renewables is really hard, but getting to 50%, 60%, 70% will not be as hard as we think and after that we will have a better toolkit for the rest..” This is a little bit contentious because it is very difficult to see that renewable energy can fully provide the current rate of on-demand power that we consume. On the other hand, we don’t need to use as much power as we do now to live high quality, developed-world-standard lives, including all of the people that don’t currently have energy access. The big challenge is not going to be lowering the total amount of energy, but shifting when we use that energy.

Richard Matsui: I’ve heard Shayle Kann from Energy Impact Partners, who we’ve also interviewed previously for the #Solar100 series, say, “In the past we used to forecast load and dispatch generation, and in the future it will be the reverse.” I think it’s another elegant way of stating that idea.

Jenny Chase: Yeah, that’s great.

THE ARCHIMEDES LEVER

Richard Matsui: Is there one of these “Unpopular Solar Opinions” that you stand behind the strongest?

Jenny Chase: You and Shayle understand financial theory. But I don’t think enough people in the environmental community understand financial theory. One of the reasons that I wrote a book [Editor’s Note: Jenny Chase’s book, Solar Power Finance Without the Jargon, is coming out with World Scientific Publishing in 2019] is because my past environmentalist, hippie, science student self did not realize how important finance and the concept of discount rates were in decision making. That knowledge needs to more widespread.

It’s actually quite a deep concept, because otherwise we have no way of comparing costs and benefits now with costs and benefits in the future, which are also uncertain.

You can argue all day about discount rates, and you should if you’re making an investment. But you can’t argue against the principle of using the appropriate discount rate to reflect the risk that a scenario will not come to pass.

Richard Matsui: Absolutely. In our hiring and onboarding process, as well as in our ongoing team meetings, it’s important that our team understand the underlying finance in our industry. Bryan Birsic at Wunder puts it really well. He describes finance as the Archimedes lever—the one thing that you could really move the needle on, precisely because the discount rate that you apply to a given asset is tremendously impactful. Most people don’t realize this.

Jenny Chase: It is. I’ve also just seen a couple of tweets over the last couple of days that mentioned that discount rates are fundamentally unethical. But they’re not; you’re comparing a certain outcome, something happening today, with an uncertain outcome. Preventing the certain bad outcome or ensuring the certain good outcome is worth more than the uncertain one.

BIFACIAL MODULES EVERYWHERE

Richard Matsui: Predictions for 2019? Especially things that you think are going to catch people by surprise.

Jenny Chase: For 2019? Bifacial modules everywhere.

Richard Matsui: I like it. What makes you think that?

Jenny Chase: Turns out that you can use glass instead of backsheet. Sorry DuPont, they do seem to give you more energy output in a lot of applications, and probably make a more durable product.

Can I give you a 2029 prediction?

Richard Matsui: Please.

Jenny Chase: By 2029, we’re going to be talking a lot more about seasonal energy storage and solutions for decarbonization. So far, we’re just getting our feet wet, we’re paddling around the shallows of decarbonization. Hopefully by 2029 we’ll be starting to wonder what happens if we turn off our coal and gas plants, even in winter. I realize that most of the U.S. is actually south of Europe, but seasonal differences in power demand and in solar generation in Germany or the UK are massive. We have a lot of variants between summer and winter in terms of day lengths and energy demand. And that means that from a [solar] perspective, solar may be the cheapest way of generating energy, even potentially somewhere like Germany. But, it’s pretty useless in the winter, so we might see some really strange things on the table. One I’m currently looking at is keeping a lake of molten salt under a lot of ground.

Richard Matsui: Sorry, one more time?

Jenny Chase: Keeping a lake of molten salt underground.

Richard Matsui: Wow, that is interesting.

Jenny Chase: You heat it up in the summer and, hey, maybe you generate power, or you use it for heating in the winter. I’m sure there are startups doing this, but the ones I found so far have already gone bankrupt, so either it’s incredibly challenging for reasons I have not yet found, or it is an idea whose time has not yet come. The whole issue of seasonal storage, for both heat and power, is going to be much more on the radar in 10 years than it is today.

Trade wars and rapid, negative policy changes in the United States and China aren’t helping the ability of solar companies to raise money, as is reflected in Mercom Capital’s latest quarter report on funding and mergers and acquisitions in the solar industry.

Mercom’s Q3 report shows total capital inflows to the solar industry for the first nine months of this year at slightly below what they were in Q1-Q3 of 2017, with a total of $6.7 billion. Despite public market funding rising 80% to $1.8 billion, venture capital (VC) investments were down 10% to only $889 million and debt financing fell 21%.

Among the companies that did receive VC investments in Q3, by far the largest announced deal benefitted U.S. developer Cypress Creek Renewables, which raised $200 million.

But as of Q3, Mercom reports that clean energy companies across the board are seeing depressed stock valuations as the top three markets – China, the United States and India – struggle with trade wars an policy changes.

“Decline in solar demand around the globe has had a strong effect on corporate financing activity in solar especially with most solar company stocks in negative territory at the end of the third quarter,” said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group.

There are some caveats to the gloom presented in this report. The first is that Mercom, like anyone in this industry, can only report deals that have been announced. For example, LONGi has built tens of gigawatts of ingot and wafer manufacturing capacity in China over the last few years, and got the money to do that from somewhere. However, the movement of capital in China can be more opaque, and if a company is merely reinvesting capital from its own revenues, this will not show up.

But the recent market changes have hit everyone, including LONGi.

“China’s solar policy change, resulting in a lower solar target and a cut in solar subsidies, has affected the solar supply chain globally,” notes Prabhu. “The solar cell and module oversupply situation, due to China policies, has hit manufacturers. Solar trade tariffs have weakened project pipelines in India, the U.S. market is also not expected to grow significantly this year. All these factors are reflected in the solar public company stocks, most of which are down in 2018 making fundraising challenging.”

And as manufacturing in particular continues to burn the fingers of investors, many have moved to solar projects. Mercom reports that announced large-scale project funding crossed $11 billion for the first nine months of 2018, and Prabhu notes that project mergers and acquisitions have been particularly robust, with 24 GW of projects changing hands.

“Solar projects continue to be a coveted asset class in the investment community as generating solar assets are now considered mature, producing low risk, attractive returns over 25 years,” Prabhu explains.

This maturity is reflected by who now owns many of these assets. While in previous years many large developers built yieldcos to hold completed solar and wind projects, as widely reported by pv magazine most of those held by solar companies have been sold off to asset managers, such as Capital Dynamics’ acquisition of 8point3 Energy Partners and Brookfield’s acquisition of TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global.

The solar PV landscape in 2018 will continue to grow and will continue to be dominated by the same handful of massive markets, albeit a broader geographical spread of installations are expected this year, finds the latest Global Solar Demand Monitor from GTM Research.

The analysts expect cumulative global capacity to grow 6% on last year, reaching 104 GW – topping the 100 GW-mark easily each year through 2022 – but perhaps the most eye-catching projection is the forecast of a 7% decline among the top four solar markets of China, the U.S., India and Japan.

This means that solar installation growth is poised to be far greater in less heralded markets, ushering in a broader geographic diversity for the industry.

GTM’s report forecasts that China will install 48 GW of new PV capacity this year, which – while accounting for 47% of global demand in 2018 – is poised to be below the 53 GW added in 2017. Of this 48 GW figure, more than half is set to be derived from distributed generation (DG) projects, which for the purposes of the report accounts for solar arrays less than 20 MW in size; so still potentially sizeable.

Solar growth in the U.S. and India, meanwhile, will be hampered by trade restrictive measures warns GTM Research solar analyst Rishab Shrestha. “Although the availability of tariff-free modules in the U.S. and the announcement that compensation will be provided to Indian developers negatively impacted by changes to tariffs and duties provides some encouragement,” Shrestha suggested.

The report expects annual PV installations to reach 10.6 GW in the U.S. and a rather conservative 7.1 GW in India. It is a similar picture in Japan, where around 7 GW of new capacity is expected.

By region, Latin America will add 5.6 GW of new PV capacity this year, which represents an annual increase of 61%, the report finds, will the MENA region is forecast to expand by a massive 281%, reaching 4.7 GW of new solar capacity in 2018.

As a result of this growth, by Egypt and Brazil are poised to become GW-scale markets in 2018. Joining this exclusive club are likely to be Spain – which last topped 1 GW of new PV in a single year in 2008 – and France.

Apple Inc. has announced that its global operations are now 100% powered by clean energy.

The tech giant’s announcement covers operations in 43 countries, including retail stores, offices, data centers and other facilities, including in the United States, India and China. The technology giant also points out that 23 of suppliers have now made similar commitments to procuring energy from renewable sources.

Currently, Apple says that it has 626 MW of renewable energy capacity in operation across the globe, and that it brough 286 MW of solar PV online in 2017. A further 15 projects are in development, which will bring its capacity up to 1.4 GW, spread across 11 countries.

The announcement says that a further nine of Apple’s suppliers have also committed to sourcing 100% of their energy from renewables; and that 85 suppliers in total have registered for the company’s clean energy portal, which it developed to help suppliers identify commercially viable renewable energy solutions.

Apple points out that its commitments include more than 485 MW of wind and solar projects developed in China to address manufacturing emissions, multiple PPAs across the United States and large-scale rooftop and floating solar projects in both Singapore and Japan.

As recently as last summer, Enphase was in deep trouble. The company was continuing to lose money despite restructuring measures, and in late June was threatened with de-listing from the NASDAQ due to low stock prices.

Only eight months later, Enphase has shown a remarkable turnaround. Under new CEO Badri Kothandaraman the company has substantially narrowed expenses and losses, unveiled new products and expanded into the fast-growing Indian market.

Q4 2017 revenues were still down 12% year-over-year to $79.7 million, but the more critical metrics of profitability have improved. Enphase is still losing money, but has brought its operating loss from -7.6% in Q3 to only -2.6%, with a net loss of less than $3 million. This is particularly significant because Enphase has shown several quarters of consistent improvement.

Kothandaraman says the improved profitability comes in part from the switch over to its IQ6 microinverter product. “Margin improvement came from the IQ 6 transition, supply chain optimization and pricing management,” stated Kothanadaraman on the company’s results call.

However, he also noted broader shifts in the company.

“We went through a major cultural transformation and developed systematic business processes for achieving world class costs with cross functional teams spanning the entire company,” Kothandaraman said.

This was marked in the company’s financial results, which show significant year-over-year declines in sales and marketing expenses, but also in research and development, which has traditionally been a big part of the company’s budget.

The improved profitability has improved investor confidence, and earlier this month the company raised $20 million in a private follow-on offering. The company’s stock has also rebounded, trading at $3.09 per share this morning, after spending four months last spring and summer at less than $1 per share.

Enphase’s product development has moved beyond the IQ6, and a month ago the company unveiled its IQ7, which weighs less and is more powerful than the IQ6. Enphase has begun shipping the IQ7 in the United States, but says that it will roll it out globally during Q2.

But even as the United States remains Enphase’s main market, the company is growing internationally. On Enphase’s quarterly results call Kothanadaraman noted that revenues in the Asia-Pacific region increased 51% during Q4, as Enphase makes inroads into the high-growth Asian market.

The company also opened an R&D center in Bangalore, India, during Q4 2017.

For the first quarter of 2018, Enphase is expecting $65-$70 million in revenues with similar margins and operating expenses to Q4 2017. The company is aiming for a 10% operating margin in by the fourth quarter of 2018.

Terraform Global has finalized the refinance of a $521 million note at 9.75%, with a new $400 million note at 6.125%. The former note had a due date of 2022, while the new note’s due date is 2026.

The debt package is being bought back at full market prices, showing that Terraform Global has performed at required levels in the transaction. That Terraform Global was allowed extend the payback period and lower the loan rate demonstrates a positive market reception following its acquisition by Canadian asset manager Brookfield.

Per SEC filings from 2015, the original bond issue was for $810 million. The capital was raised for multiple purposes, including ‘transactions’ paying for two under construction projects – one wind and one solar, plus aquiring seven portfolios of projects from around the world. The two projects under construction, defined as ‘acquired projects’ were:

• Chint-NSM Transaction—the acquisition from an affiliate of Chint Solar (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd., of the remaining 51% interest in the 23.9 MW solar project NSM 24 located in India; and
• Hercules Transaction—the acquisition of two wholly owned subsidiaries of Honiton, which includes the 148.5 MW wind project located in China.

The seven portfolio level transactions were:

• Solarpack Transaction—the acquisition from Solarpack Corporación Tecnológica, S.L., a Spanish solar developer, or “Solarpack,” of the 26.4 MW solar project Alto Cielo located in Uruguay;
• Chint-Soutpan/Witkop Transaction—the acquisition of an additional 41.3% interest in the solar projects Soutpan and Witkop located in South Africa and currently owned by an affiliate of Chint Solar (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd., representing 26.4 MW in the aggregate;
• BioTherm Transaction—the acquisition from BTSA Netherlands Cooperative U.A., a South African renewable project developer, or “BioTherm,” of the solar projects Aries and Konkoonsies and the wind project Klipheuwel located in South Africa, representing 32.6 MW in the aggregate;
• FERSA Transaction—the acquisition from Fersa Energías Renovables, S.A., a Spanish wind energy developer, of the wind projects Bhakrani, Gadag and Hanumanhatti located in India, representing 101.6 MW in the aggregate;
• Renova Transaction—the acquisition from Renova of three wind and hydro-electric projects located in Brazil, representing 336.2 MW in the aggregate;
• LAP Transaction—the acquisition of six hydro-electric projects located in Peru, representing 72.5 MW in the aggregate, as part of our Sponsor’s acquisition of LAP, a developer and operator of hydro-electric generation facilities; and
• GME Transaction—the acquisition of Globeleq Mesoamérica Energy Wind Energy Limited, or “GME,” including a portfolio consisting of solar and wind projects located in Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, representing 326.0 MW in the aggregate.

Terraform Global is one of two yieldcos created by SunEdison. Terraform Power held U.S. based assets, while Terraform Global held globally placed assets for the renewable energy developer.

SunEdison, as part of their bankrupcty processes, sold the two groups to Brookfield. The Terraform Global transaction closed in January, while the purchase of TerraForm Power was completed in October, 2017.

Market acceptance of solar yieldcos has been stressed both by the demise of SunEdison and the recent fire sale of 8Point3 by First Solar and SunPower. The asset class has seen investor skepticism, in part due to the conflict of interest between the relationship of yieldcos to the companies that form them and their responsibilities to their shareholders. However, the successful refinancing of TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global shows that at least these two companies are experiencing greater confidence in financial markets.

GTM Research has released its solar tracker market figures for 2017. Overall, it says a record 14.5 GW were shipped globally last year, up from 11.6 GW in 2016, with NEXTracker Inc. assuming the leading position, accounting for a third of all shipments.

Array Technologies Inc. also maintained its position, ranking second; while First Solar Inc. was usurped this year by Spain’s Soltec Renewable SL, which grew to become the third largest tracker supplier. Arctech Inc. and Convert Italia SpA, meanwhile, swapped positions, coming in fourth and fifth, respectively.

On the back of the Section 201 solar tariff uncertainty in the U.S. last year, the market was “significantly stunted,” meaning Latin America was recognized as the largest solar tracker market, for the first time, kicking the U.S. to second spot.

“Mexico and Brazil are two of the fastest growing solar markets in the world, each accounting for over 1.5 gigawatts of tracker shipments in 2017,” said Scott Moskowitz, senior analyst at GTM Research, and author of the study.

Despite the strong growth – 32% year-on-year – GTM Research said it still expects to see continued consolidation, with vendor margins squeezed as the market grows. It points to the acquisition of Exosun by steel giant, ArcelorMittal this January.

Looking ahead to 2018, the researchers forecast even stronger growth – 30% or up to 20 GW. “Fundamentals in the global utility-scale solar industry are excellent, and trackers are an obvious choice in most developing solar markets,” said Moskowitz.

Tracker trends

Last week’s pv magazine Weekend Read focused on how bifacial panel use on trackers is expected to grow to a double digit share within a year, and eventually become the dominant design.

Indeed, while bifacial panels may capture up to 10% more light than monofacial panels, single-axis trackers typically add 25% to that bifacial gain, resulting in a roughly estimated 12.5% gain from the two technologies combined, writes Charles W. Thruston.

“We are already being asked to quote these bifacial tracker systems for the 2019 timeframe,” Mark Preston, Vice President of Engineering at Array Technologies told Thurston in an interview.

“Next year there will be explosive growth in bifacial tracker installations,” predicted Guy Rong, CEO of Arctech Solar, based in Kunshan, while Dan Shugar, Founder of NEXTracker said, “The bifacial tracker is one of most exciting untapped opportunities in the solar industry; there will be a huge drive toward this.”

In January, meanwhile, Thurston reported on how the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment seems poised for exponential growth in tracking technology, on the back of advances in marketing with models like community solar, and advances in financing and technology.

Global tracker deployment

According to pv magazine’s latest annual tracker survey, published last July, and which analyzed data from 2016, the U.S. leads the global markets in terms of cumulative installed tracker capacity, at 8.39 GW, followed by India at 1.25 GW and Brazil, with 1.02 GW.

Overall, 12.83 GW of solar trackers were installed across the globe, at the time of the survey, while another 6.53 GW were either under construction or had been contracted. Click to enlarge the image below for a detailed geographical breakdown.

Watch out for pv magazine’s 2018 solar tracker survey this summer.

Globally, PV capacity will expand more over the next five years than any other renewable-energy technology, KPMG said in its latest report, Great expectations: Deal making in the renewable energy sector.

The accounting and financial services firm drew its findings from a survey of 200 renewable-energy investors, which was conducted in the third quarter of 2017. It solely spoke to investors that specialize in large-scale PV, thermal solar, hydropower, biomass and geothermal projects, as well as onshore and offshore wind installations. The report found 406 investments in large-scale renewables in 2017, collectively valued at roughly US$49.5 billion.

KPMG said it expects solar to outpace other renewable technologies, due to “improvements in technology and lower costs relative to other types of renewables.” PV has grown more than any other renewable-energy sub-sector in recent years, it said, accounting for 47% of all new generating capacity that was added throughout the world in 2016, followed by wind power at 34%, and hydropower at 15.5%.

Battery storage innovation

“But the future of all three depends on innovation in battery storage and energy aggregators, both of which are becoming increasingly important to investors,” KPMG said. “Innovation in secondary technology like storage and energy aggregators is also proving to be important in investment decisions, as they contribute to stability and security of supply.”

Almost all of the survey respondents said battery storage has become an important consideration when weighing the pros and cons of a potential investment in renewable-energy projects. KPMG said that 31% of those who responded believe that battery-backed renewables will start delivering continuous electricity at grid parity within the next five to six years. However, 38% of respondents said that they don’t expect that to happen for another nine to 16 years.

“Large, grid-scale battery systems are vital to the future of renewables,” KPMG said. “There have been remarkable developments in the area of battery storage in recent years.”

Similarly, nearly all of the survey respondents expect more and more investors to aggregate small renewable-energy projects in the years to come, primarily as a means of encouraging investment. In addition, KPMG noted that 74% of respondents believe that hydrogen will play a key role in facilitating renewables deployment in the years to come.

“Demand and supply are monitored and dispatched by the aggregator, so the grid is kept in balance,” the global accounting firm said, noting that solar and wind projects are often built in jurisdictions with “fragile,” overburdened grid infrastructure. “Networks of this kind — known variously as virtual power plants (VPPs) — are built around the latest advances in technology, from the cloud to smart appliances.”

Policy power

About 60% of the respondents to the survey said that they viewed Germany’s policies as the most progressive in the developed world, as they are the most conducive to investment. However, 43% said the U.S. had the least attractive policies among economically advanced countries, from an investment perspective.

“Government policy and financial backing can make markets more appealing… Germany is at the heart of this investor activity, due to its stable regulatory landscape and continuous development plans for renewables,” KPMG said.

Meanwhile, China continues to lure fresh investment purely through “sheer scale,” according to the firm. The country installed 52.83 GW of solar in 2017, pushing its cumulative installed capacity above the 130 GW mark. About 21% of the survey respondents view China as among the best countries in the world for PV investment, KPMG said, pointing to the government’s plans to invest CNY 2.5 trillion($377 billion) in renewables through 2020.

Due to their favourable policies, the survey respondents overwhelmingly expect both Germany and China to see the biggest jump in renewable-energy mergers and acquisitions (M&As) over the coming year. However, KPMG noted that emerging markets are starting to play an increasingly important role in global renewables deployment.

“Institutional investors are focusing on emerging economies including Mexico, India, Vietnam, South Africa and Chile for renewable assets,” the firm added. “Affordable solar energy also offers a potential solution to emerging economies in Africa and elsewhere.”

KPMG concluded that investments in renewable energy will continue to rise throughout the world in the years to come. “From offshore and onshore wind to photovoltaic and thermal solar, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass, more and more investors are entering the renewables arena — including oil and gas companies searching for opportunities.”

GTM Research has published its annual rankings of the world’s largest developers, and they continue to reflect China’s dominance of the global PV market.

The two top companies by installed capacity are based in the Chinese market, with State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) taking the top spot and GCL New Energy relatively close behind.

However, looking to the future the picture is less clear. GCL still has the largest announced pipeline at over 7 GW, but is followed by companies active primarily in the U.S. market: Canadian Solar and First Solar. French oil giant Total, which owns SunPower and Eren, comes in fourth place.

There is some nuance to these rankings. GTM’s report does not look at SPIC’s pipeline, as it does not closely examine companies active in only one market. Furthermore, the report was published before the final ruling on Section 201 duties by the Trump Administration, which may affect U.S. project pipelines.

This ruling does not pose any challenges for First Solar’s building out its nearly 5 GW pipeline, as the company’s thin film products are not covered under the scope of the Section 201 case. However import duties may be a barrier for both Canadian Solar and Total.

Canadian Solar’s modules will be subject to 30% import duties whether made in Canada or China, as will SunPower’s back-contact products, which will be more disadvantaged due to their higher price and the ad valorem nature of the tariffs. SunPower has reported that it has stored 3 1/2 to 6 months of tariff-free modules for its distributed solar business, but its ability to supply utility-scale projects is less clear.

Among the top 10 developers by installed capacity, only three – Engie, Enerparc and Lightsource – have substantial capacity in Europe.

This reinforces a key finding of GTM Research’s report, in that the rise of markets in Latin America, India and other developing nations is re-shaping the global developer landscape. In terms of Latin America, Italy’s Enel Green Power has the largest pipeline, but this is also a market where First Solar, Total, Canadian Solar, EDF and other companies are active.

Additionally, there is the possibility that Canadian Solar and Total will step up their development activities in other markets because of the competitive disadvantage of products made by their captive manufacturing in the U.S. market due to the Section 201 tariffs.

Correction: This article was corrected at 10:10 AM EST on February 16. The earlier version of the article identified a much smaller pipeline for GCL, due to pv magazine being supplied with outdated information. We regret the inaccuracy.

The U.S. Republican Party has consistently opposed the U.S. government participation in banking and other parts of the economy which have been dominated by the private sector, and this is certainly true of President Trump.

Which makes it strange that during the first year under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) more than doubled the volume of loans that it provided for solar projects to $253 million, according to research published by Reuters.

This included a loan for a solar project in Zambia supported by First Solar, AES Corporation solar projects in Jordan and El Salvador and a project by a developer in India.

Together with wind and other renewable energy sources, clean energy projects represented 90% of OPIC loans in 2017, the highest portion since 2013. This allowed clean energy finance to rise even as the total volume of OPIC energy-related loans fell to $633 million.

OPIC and the Export-Import Bank played a critical role in jump-starting solar in Latin America, with government funding allowing U.S. solar companies SunEdison, SunPower and First Solar to land a series of projects in Northern Chile in 2013 and 2014.

However since that time the organization has been hit by scandal, and is currently under investigation by its internal watchdog for the loans made to three of these solar plants and a hydro plant in Chile. Two of the solar plants were built as merchant projects, a business model which has proven disastrous for the few solar projects which have tried it to date, and all three have had to restructure their debts.

The politics of OPIC deserve mention. As a development finance institution OPIC is a sort of government bank, and while it has largely fallen under the radar of many Republicans, it has drawn fire from the U.S. Senator most ideologically opposed to many parts of the Republican agenda. In 2015 Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) described the bank’s actions as “corporate welfare” and an incentive to invest outside the United States.

Longi Solar has confirmed it will be the first Chinese solar company to set up manufacturing facilities in India. The news comes just a month after the company said it would invest $300 million in a 5 GW module facility in China.

A spokesperson for the company tells pv magazine the new facility, located in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, will manufacture 500 MW of monocrystalline cells and modules, respectively. The first phase will see a roughly $27 million investment.

They add that Longi undertook a 500 MW cell and module investment plan in 2016. The company will kick off construction during its AP Investment Summit this February, with production beginning by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2019.

At the end of November, the Indian Government announced plans to ramp up the country’s domestic renewable energy manufacturing industry via an auction for facilities totaling 20 GW.

“The local government will support the project by preferential policies relating to power supply, water supply, taxation, waste-water processing, education/training and international certification for a three year term,” says the spokesperson.

They add that Longi will expand production capacity “with a big jump to meet India AD/CVD demand,” as well as expected demand from the U.S., following the recent solar tariffs, from which India has a partial exemption.

However, this exemption only applies as long as India does not provide more than 3% of total imports to the U.S. market. At current market volumes, this will limit the entire nation to less than 300 MW of PV exports to the United States per year.

In all three rounds of trade action on imported solar stretching back to 2012, the issue of scope has been contentious. The anti-dumping (AD) and anti-subsidy (countervailing duty or CVD) import duties were all focused on crystalline silicon, which meant that thin film solar like that made by First Solar was exempt – despite the fact that it directly competes in the utility-scale market with crystalline silicon products.

The same has been true of the Section 201 process, and this drew both criticism and requests for exemptions from those companies that also make differentiated products based on crystalline silicon technology.

Most notably, during the International Trade Commission’s Section 201 process, SunPower asked for an exemption for its Interdigiated Back Contact (IBC) solar cells and modules. These offer the highest efficiencies available for residential or rooftop applications and command a premium price for this, which was the basis for SunPower’s argument that they do not compete directly with domestic products.

Additionally, during the October 3 trade hearing at the International Trade Commission (ITC), representatives of the government of South Korea asked for their nation to be exempt, noting Korea’s position in supplying n-type monocrystalline silicon cells for the U.S. market. SunPower’s IBC cell production in the Philippines is based on n-type mono, and, like IBC, other n-type mono products offer higher efficiencies than standard multicrystalline silicon.

Thus these are the two product categories most likely to seek exemptions, under a process revealed in President Trump’s January 23 proclamation implementing tariffs on imported cells and modules.

It is possible that Tesla will also seek an exemption, given that SolarCity before its acquisition by Tesla argued that AD and CVD duties on Chinese products should not apply to Silevo’s multi-junction solar products that it was importing from China. Since that time Tesla has switched to Panasonic’s Heterojunction Intrinsic Thin Film (HIT) technology for its solar “gigafactory” in Upstate New York.

And while the gigafactory’s expected 1 GW of annual output should make it so that Tesla does not need to import anything, it is unclear when the factory will actually reach this milestone, and in the interim Tesla may be dependent upon imported product. Since HIT, like Silevo’s Triex, is a product that combines crystalline silicon and amorphous silicon layers, this may end up being the basis for an request for exemption.

Within 30 days, the U.S. Trade Representative will publish requests for exclusion in the Federal Register. There is no guarantee that any particular product will be accepted.

Nation-specific exemptions

While Section 201 sets global safeguard relief, there are also exemptions for certain developing nations that are WTO members, as long as this nation’s share of imports is not more than 3% of total imports, and as long as the collective share of all these is not more than 9% of total imports.

Several dozen nations are in the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) list that is eligible for such treatment. Thailand and the Philippines are excluded because they represent more than 3% of such imports. Of the remaining nations pv magazine was able to identify five that have at least 100 MW of annual PV production: Algeria, Brazil, India, Tunisia and Turkey.

Additionally, Egypt’s first PV manufacturing facility is currently underway, and Mozambique and Jordan have small factories. However, if imports from any of these nations exceeds the 3% of total imports or the total exceeds 9%, this exemption can be removed.

Tariffs are expected to take effect February 7.

The move to increase the percentage of wind and solar power into existing grids has become polarized, like many issues nowadays. Naysayers continue to perpetuate outdated assumptions, claiming that large amounts of solar and wind power operating in a grid is too expensive, risky to reliability and is wasteful of existing power plant resources. Many supporters, including those advocating a 100% renewable sourced power grid, downplay the technical challenges involved at very high levels.

As usual with such issues, the answer lies somewhere in between. And for those seeking guidance that isn’t excruciatingly technical, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has published “Getting Wind and Sun onto the Grid – A Manual for Policy Makers”. Twenty countries’ grids were used as references, from Mexico, with a low percentage of PV and wind in its grid, to high-percentage Denmark.

The manual lays out two theses to integrating PV and wind power into the grid. While there are technical challenges to achieving high levels of penetration of variable renewable electricity (VRE), such integration can be achieved manageably and cost effectively.

The IEA report explodes six “myths” about grid integration. In brief (1); weather factors are quite manageable (2); VRE does not impose high costs on conventional power plants (3); it does not require one-to-one back up (4); VRE is not very expensive compared to the alternatives; (5) it does not necessarily need storage, especially in early stages and (6) is not destabilizing.

The study then describes a number of stages or “phases” of VRE development. The first stage, or Phase One, is where VRE is in the low single digit percentages of penetration. At this point, to use highly technical language, it’s no big deal. Low daily variations are well within the operating capability of any decent grid.

At Phase Two, no strict penetration level is given, but it appears generally as VRE approaches or passes double digit percentage penetration. VRE becomes apparent to grid management, but not significant enough to impact the system as a whole. Local grid conditions may necessitate matching between demand and VRE output. Phase Three the presence of VRE becomes more apparent as its output can swing in large percentages of total capacity across the grid. Management of operating conventional power plants at different levels becomes important, as well as two-way flows of voltage levels. At this stage, the availability of flexible resources comes into play.

At Phase Four, variability can match 100% of power demand, and conventional power would need to respond in a variable fashion. This condition is where management practices such as using inertia of conventional power plants to act as short term energy storage can be deployed. Going beyond Phase Four, the use of the complementary VRE capabilities of solar and wind can be successfully used to a large percentage or completely in many locations. Where there is a lack of complementary resources, large scale storage, especially chemical or thermal, can be used to supplement.

Each phase in the manual is given a brief section with illustrative examples and tables. The summation gives a balanced appraisal, emphasizing implementation in stages, where changes can be made in accommodating fashion to conventional power plants and grid infrastructure, as the percentage of VRE increases. As such Getting Wind and Solar Onto the Grid can act as a bridge for policy makers between the public and power business and technical communities who may not be so enamored to change.

So close. Seven months after Brookfield struck a deal to acquire TerraForm Power and TerraForm Global, the two solar and wind yieldcos created by SunEdison, the asset manager is finally closing the deals.

Brookfield closed on the acquisition of a 51% share in TerraForm Power a month ago, and yesterday TerraForm Global’s shareholders voted to approve the acquisition by Brookfield in a special meeting.

However, there is still one more step before Brookfield can take over Global and its 919 MW of solar and wind projects in Brazil, India, China and other developing nations. Global has reached a $57 million settlement with investors who sued the company over its initial public offering, and this must still receive court approval.

Global says that it will pay the $57 million through a combination of proceeds from existing insurance and litigation settlement proceeds. This will not settle securities suits related to the company’s private offerings, which Global says that it is working “diligently” to resolve.

TerraForm Power and Global’s solar and wind assets add to Brookfield’s existing $31 billion portfolio of renewable energy assets. This includes over 200 hydroelectric projects in North and South America, which it calls the largest independently owned hydro portfolio of its kind. The company also owns dozens of wind plants, four biomass plants, and a 600 megawatt pumped hydro storage facility in Massachusetts.

The global solar market is set to end 2017 some 95 GW larger than when it began, according to German analyst firm Bernreuter Research.

This record growth could even hit triple figures going by polysilicon supply data, which is enough to push global production of crystalline silicon cells to 100 GW, the report adds.

China’s solar PV market is on track to reach 52 GW of new installations this year, with the U.S. way back in second place with 12.5 GW of new solar, followed by India (9 GW), Japan (a mere 5.8 GW), Germany (2.2 GW) and Brazil (1.3 GW). Australia, Chile, Turkey and South Korea will all be GW-scale markets this year, Bernreuter Research said.

Given shipment time lags and inventories in the supply chain, as much as 100 GW of crystalline solar cells and an additional 5 GW of thin-film modules will be produced in the calendar year. This translates to 95 to 97 GW of installations. This figure represents a 30% growth on 2016’s 74 GW of new solar.

“Several gigawatts of solar module shipments into the U.S. will be stockpiled for installation in 2018 to avoid impending tariffs on cell and module imports in the trade case brought up by Suniva and SolarWorld Americas,” explains Johannes Bernreuter, head of Bernreuter Research.

Polysilicon price declines

The global polysilicon industry will produce between 460,000 to 465,000 metric tons (MT) this year, of which around 30,000 MT will be for the semiconductor industry. Bernreuter says that the growth in diamond wire sawing to produce wafers is leading to a reduction in specific silicon consumption, meaning that inventories of polysilicon do not need to be overly depleted in order to reach 100 GW of solar cell production.

The current spot price of polysilicon – $16.60/Kg – will fall to between $14-$15/Kg, the report adds, when capacities that are currently under maintenance are brought back online. Prices could rise again, however, if China imposes higher duties on imports from South Korea – a decision on this is expected in November.

India’s soaraway solar success could be facing some deflation in the coming months, Bernreuter Research adds, echoing Bridge to India’s recent analysis of the market. Rampant Chinese demand has led to higher module prices in India, allied to low tariffs that have prompted a series of module cancellations from China. This is already slowed installation momentum, meaning India may fall short of hitting double-GW figures for 2017.