The government of Bangladesh has extended an incentive scheme opened last year to encourage local firms to manufacture and export solar modules. Dhaka pays solar manufacturers 10% of the value of their exports in a bid to foster a domestic PV industry and state-owned lender Bangladesh Bank recently announced the scheme will be extended to cover this financial year. The nation has a small panel manufacturing industry with an annual production capacity of 100 MW. Bangladeshi manufacturers claim their products, which are chiefly shipped to Nepal and the Philippines, can generate 320 W and boast 19.5% efficiency. The government already grants a tax waiver for imports of solar raw materials and the announcement the cash incentive scheme would be extended was welcomed by Munawar Misbah Moin, president of the Solar Module Manufacturers Association of Bangladesh (SMMAB). “Though the export volume is very small until now, the incentives will definitely help the sector,” Moin told pv magazine. More to be done However, the chief of the trade body called for more help from Dhaka to encourage the use of panels in the domestic market. Moin on Sunday suggested the government apply a 30% local content requirement for modules used in public solar projects and installation programs and said Bangladeshi panels should be prioritized for the government’s plan to install rooftop PV on all public buildings. Moin cited the example of neighboring India, where he said Indian made panels have been allocated 2.5 GW of 10 GW of government-driven solar power project capacity. In China, said the SMMAB president, local content requirements make it near impossible for foreign panels to get a foothold in the market. “The basic demand of a product should come from [the] local market,” said Moin. “And the government should help create the situation.” Association general secretary Golam Baki Masud said Indian module manufacturers enjoy an 18% cash incentive linked to export value alongside a tax waiver on imported raw materials. “We need long term loans and loans at 4-5% interest as a green industry,” he said. Masud also repeated calls for a restriction on the volume of solar module imports to Bangladesh and for the application of standards to ensure poor quality products will not be used on PV projects.

Solar analyst the Asia-Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory has offered hope the world’s biggest solar marketplace may experience an end-of year resurgence in installations – if only in the form of domestic rooftop arrays. With China’s National Energy Administration this morning confirming the world’s biggest solar marketplace had added less than 16 GW of new solar generation capacity to the end of last month, it appeared widespread talk of an impressive year-end PV rally in China had been overblown. Only 4.59 GW of new solar capacity was added between July and September but the AECEA has pointed out that within that modest figure – less than half the roughly 10 GW added in the same period last year – some 920 MW of household solar capacity was installed last month alone. That domestic solar surge is down to the fact household solar will continue to benefit from the RMB0.18/kWh ($0.025) solar feed-in tariff until the end of October – on Thursday. An October boom? With a bumper September having taken Chinese household solar past its annual new capacity target of 3.5 GW to 4.27 GW by the end of last month, the AECEA reckons the figure could end up having risen to 5 GW once the October stats are added in. Whether that is a sufficient basis for predicting domestic solar will continue to benefit from a feed-in tariff even into the subsidy-free solar world envisaged by Beijing from 2021 onwards, as posited by the AECEA, is a different matter. Although the rooftop surge will be seen as a positive, however, the AECEA has once again revised down its estimate of the volume of new solar capacity it expects to be deployed in China this year, to a 20-24 GW figure well below what it was predicting at the turn of the year. In fact, the AECEA estimates give a reliable impression of the unpredictability that has hit China during a year when months of solar policy uncertainty was followed by delayed announcements of the new guidelines, and all at a time when the price of solar modules continued to plummet. The consultancy initially predicted China would see 35-40 GW of new solar capacity this year, before reducing the figure to 28-34 GW as the authorities failed to announce a new solar incentive regime. When the new rules did materialize, the AECEA estimate rose to 38-42 GW before again falling away, to 24-32 GW. Now it has fallen again, with only two months left for any late rally to lift the figure.

From pv magazine France. French development agency the Agence Française de Développement has offered €1.6 million to businesses and NGOs to fund novel off-grid energy projects in Africa to provide sustainable heating and cooling as well as electricity. The organization, together with the French Environment & Energy Management Agency will finance a dozen projects that innovate in some manner and provide environmentally sustainable development in Africa. It is the second time a call for projects has been launched. In 2017, some 100 projects were submitted and nine supported for a total investment of €5.8 million and public support amounting to €1.8 million. Among the previous winners were hybrid solar plants, river turbines and off-grid electrical infrastructure. Other projects proposing innovative uses of electricity were also selected, including improved irrigation, agriculture, desalination and mobility systems as well as new energy billing schemes such as pay-as-you-go and leasing options. The deadline for submitting applications is December 16.

South Jeolla province, in the Honam region at the southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula, is seeing blossoming development of small scale renewables projects. Such solar arrays and other installations, with a generation capacity of no more than 1 MW each, are exempt from permitting requirements under Korean law. South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE), says there are around 18,000 projects of the kind under development in the region, which is also seeing several larger solar parks developed. MOTIE said a new energy strategy launched in December by central government had prompted provincial authorities to support renewables development on a huge scale. Deforestation fears Far from being universally welcome news, the Korea Herald newspaper in April reported claims by the opposition Liberty Korea Party that project developers had felled 2 million trees nationwide to make room for solar plants, with around 4,407 hectares of forest allegedly cleared. The provinces of North Gyeongsang and South Jeolla are said to have suffered the most, with 600,000 and 460,000 trees lost, respectively. The government has said it will introduce restrictions on the small scale arrays that have proliferated, to reduce their environmental impact. The authorities will also survey approved projects and prepare supplementary measures to strengthen local residents’ acceptance of such facilities. “The government will keep making efforts to expand the distribution of clean energies in a systematic and orderly manner while minimizing problems such as environmental damage,” MOTIE said in a press release. Small systems drive demand According to the latest MOTIE statistics, Korea added around 1.64 GW of new solar generation capacity in the first seven months of the year, with South Jeolla alone adding 18.3% of the new arrays. Some 92.1% of the new solar added in Korea to the end of July – around 1.5 GW – came in the form of sub-1 MW systems. Under Korea’s Electric Utility Act, power producers can sell electricity to utility KEPCO under a power purchase agreement if a plant is on an island or if its generation capacity is no larger than 1 MW.

Namibia’s state-owned electric utility NamPower has unveiled a plan to add 220 MW of power generation capacity from renewables it says will help it become the leading electricity provider in the Southern African Development Community of 16 countries in central-southern Africa. According to its Corporate Strategy and Business Plan 2019-2023, NamPower wants to add 150 MW of new generation capacity to its portfolio through 20 MW of solar, 40 MW each of biomass and wind and 50 MW of guaranteed ‘firm’ electricity output. The utility said it will also acquire a further 70 MW of generation capacity – 20 MW from solar and 50 MW wind. NamPower announced its 20 MW Omburu PV Power Project will be built near Omaruru in the Erongo region in the northwest of the country. The NAD500 million ($34.5 million) facility is set for completion next year. The second 20 MW solar project, which will be assigned to an independent power producer through a procurement exercise, will be built near Gobabis and Rehoboth town, in central Namibia, for around NAD400 million and is planned to come online in 2021. The utility said its renewables plan is aligned with the National Integrated Resource Plan which envisages the development of electricity generation and transmission by increasing local capacity to 755 MW, and aims to provide access to electricity for half the population by 2022. Reducing reliance on power imports “For many years, Namibia’s electricity sector has been dependent on electricity imports from the SADC region but rapid technology development in solar PV, wind, biomass and storage will enable NamPower to diversify the local generation mix, reduce dependency on electricity imports and ultimately deliver a sustainable, least-cost supply mix to the economy of Namibia,” the company stated. At the end of July, NamPower had an installed generation capacity of around 521 MW, with another 274 MW under development. Most of its operational capacity comes from hydropower, with 347 MW, and solar projects with an installed capacity of 117 MW. NamPower has signed power purchase agreements with independent power producers through tenders and the national Renewable Energy Feed In Tariff program. Namibia’s largest solar plant is a 45.5 MW facility built by Spanish company Alten Energías Renovables. The project was developed by a joint venture between Alten, NamPower and Namibian solar companies Mangrove, Talyeni and First Place Investment. The nation’s other operational solar parks each have less than 5 MW capacity and are spread across Namibia. Half of the nation’s electricity demand is met by imports from neighboring countries including financially troubled South African utility Eskom.

From pv magazine Australia. Australian green bank the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is looking to increase focus on grid stability and large scale storage on the back of record investment commitments in the last 12 months. The federal government lender’s key priorities for 2019-20 and beyond will aim to take advantage of Australia’s robust renewable energy resources and support the transition to a distributed energy model. The CEFC invested almost $1.5 billion (US$1.03 billion) across 30 projects with a total value of $6.3 billion in the last fiscal year. Of that, $1.3 billion was invested in clean energy, an unprecedented amount since the bank began operations in 2012. In addition, a record $320 million of CEFC finance was repaid during the year for reinvestment in new projects. New commitments in 2018-19 included $940 million for renewable energy and $524 million across a range of energy efficiency and low emission projects. Each dollar of the taxpayer-funded body’s finance committed in the last year was matched by more than $3 from the private sector. “Following strong progress in the development of the large scale solar and wind sectors, our investments will also increasingly target new technologies where there is less appetite from mainstream investors – including pumped storage and large scale batteries, behind-the-meter generation and grid solutions,” said CEFC chief executive Ian Learmonth in a statement. Another 2018-19 record came from investments for smaller scale projects in co-finance partnerships, with $400 million allocated for 5,800 projects with values from $10,000 to $5 million. Through the Clean Energy Innovation Fund the CEFC also strengthened its position as Australia’s largest investor in the early stage cleantech sector, with investment commitments of $69 million at the end of June. Overall commitments and new frontiers As expected, the scale of new investment commitments in 2018-19 was lower than the record $2.3 billion achieved in the previous year, with 39 direct clean energy investments across renewable energy ($1.1 billion), energy efficiency ($939 million), transport ($100 million) and waste-related projects ($127 million). “This reflects broader market conditions including the build out of the Renewable Energy Target,” Learmonth said. “Grid and transmission constraints also contributed to a lower rate of new investments in large scale renewables.” With Australia expected to have one of the most decentralized electricity systems in the world by 2050, the CEFC has a big task in backing new technologies and industries so they can benefit from the green bank’s finance as they gain commercial traction with private investors. “We see a critical need for coordinated investment in generation, storage and transmission infrastructure as part of a stable and reliable grid,” Learmonth said. “In particular, pumped hydro and other forms of dispatchable renewable energy are under consideration and, from our perspecti...