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...

From pv magazine USA. Bifacial solar modules have been excluded from Section 201 tariffs as per a ruling by the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) meaning bifacial products will no longer pay a fee of 25% on top of the cost at the point of import into the U.S. The ruling, found in Product Exclusions: Particular Products from the Solar Products Safeguard Measure, states the following products will be excluded: (15) bifacial solar panels that absorb light and generate electricity on each side of the panel and that consist of only bifacial solar cells that absorb light and generate electricity on each side of the cells Other products applied for exclusion from the tariff but in the ruling, the USTR ignored the claims of products with 72 or more cells and those without busbars or gridlines and suggested it would be unlikely to revisit the issue. The ruling does excludes flexible fiberglass solar panels with an output of 250-900 W from the Section 201 tariffs, as well as those with a spacing greater than 10mm between cells filled by optical film. The effect of the change will be blunted for large projects with long construction timetables but there is probably a developer on the phone right now who sees a chance to change products that are getting put on a boat somewhere, because the savings could be substantial. A module that cost $0.25-0.35 per watt under the import tariff will now save $0.06-0.09/W in the U.S. by switching to bifacial. For developers seeing all-in pricing of around $1 per watt-DC, a system price decrease on that level is significant. Large scale developers have a delivery window that can be years long – for instance the Palen Solar Project, in its filings with the Bureau of Land Management, suggested solar modules would take 22 months to arrive at the site via more than 8,000 truck deliveries (see table above). Those modules, if delivery had begun this month, would first save 25% up to early February, then 20% and 15% as the tariff declined annually. As those groups are already going all-in on single axis trackers specifically designed for bifacial modules, it could be utility scale product shifts will be limited as the market has already shifted to greater adoption of bifacial technology. Given bifacial modules can often be found at a similar price point as standard panels, one might think developers would purchase whichever product is cheaper, even when siting restrictions mean not all the benefits offered by bifacial technology are available. As a result, we should expect to see some cannibalization of the market for standard modules. However, that can only go so far. Manufacturing lines for certain product types can only change so fast. Also, glass on glass bifacial modules don’t fit in the standard module supply chain as easily, as their physical structure requires different installation hardware. There is a chance the legal change can be exploited on manufacturing lines if Dupont can deliver its clear bac...