After a strong start to the year, new orders from suppliers in Germany declined significantly in the course of 2017. However, order books are still well filled.

Starting from next year, the incentive scheme for solar in Austria will change. FITs will be prioritized for self-consumption projects. In addition, starting in March 2018, a nationwide storage incentive prorgam will be launched.

Milan Nitzschke, president of EU ProSun and spokesman AEGIS Europe, an industry alliance representing 30 European manufacturing sectors, explains what China’s quest for market economy status has to do with the new European anti-dumping directives, and what effect they will have on the measures against Chinese PV manufacturers.

The new legal framework for anti-dumping, designed to protect the EU against unfair trade practices, has been signed. It will come into force on December 20.

In two separate studies, in the U.K. and Switzerland, respectively, the notion of combining solar power and trains has been explored. The results indicate it could offer a cost-competitive, energy saving alternative to the traditional power methods currently employed.

The construction contractor will start insolvency proceedings at the district court in Munich next week.

The deadline to submit project proposals is February 1. In addition, the Bundesnetzagentur has scheduled the first joint auction for large-scale wind and solar projects for April 1, 2018.

According to Swissolar, this change will allow more PV capacity to be deployed, as waiting times for the implementation of FIT contracts are considerably increasing. Self-consumption is also becoming more attractive for multi-family houses and commercial enterprises.

In the first ten months of 2017, new PV additions totaled 1,465 MW, which is almost the same amount of installed solar capacity installed in the same period of last year.

The new order comes from an unspecified customer from China, and includes the shipment of Singulus’ new sputtering system.