Legal

The controlling shareholders of Shenzhen-listed solar manufacturer Jolywood have agreed to sell their stakes to state-owned WJ Energy, as two more power companies revealed big plans for new capacity. NYSE-listed Daqo, meanwhile, is mulling an IPO in its homeland.

They are words to chill the soul of solar project owners when uttered in relation to feed-in tariffs: retroactive FIT cuts. A Ukrainian government smarting at the cost of funding an overly successful solar incentive program appears bent on emulating the approach of governments in Spain, Italy and Czechia by reopening signed payment contracts to reset the monies paid for clean power, despite the costly lawsuits that have greeted such moves in the past.

The Düsseldorf Regional Court has agreed rivals of the Korean manufacturer illegally used its patented passivation technology. The judges granted Hanwha Q-Cells an injunction which requires Jinko, REC and Longi to retrieve all modules featuring the patented technology distributed in Germany since late January last year. Hanwha can also opt to have the offending products destroyed.

The EU appears poised to roll out battery storage capacity to provide flexibility to systems with more variable renewables. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy has also noted policies that must be addressed to establish a level playing field for storage.

The Ukrainian government’s conference rooms have been stuffier than usual lately, as policymakers and renewable energy industry representatives attempted to thrash out a compromise to reduce the financial burden left on the administration by a feed-in tariff incentive regime which drove almost 2 GW of generation capacity. The resulting retroactive cuts to payments, outlined below by Ukraine-based lawyer Svitlana Teush, have at least had input from both sides.

Talesun has announced plans to deploy 1 GW of new heterojunction solar cell production capacity, while rack manufacturer Akcome Technologies revealed plans to annually produce 2 GW of the same tech. Panda Green, meanwhile, has secured the exclusive rights to a 1 GW project featuring PV and photothermal generation.

The Chinese solar panel making division of the debt-saddled company appears likely to be broken up after admitting creditors will take controlling stakes in its business units following the successful petition of a court in Hebei province.

The Chinese manufacturer this morning said the International Trade Commission had agreed with the initial determination issued by an administrative law judge in April, that Jinko and peers Longi Solar and REC Group had not infringed Hanwha’s solar cell passivation technology.

Minister of economic affairs and climate change, Eric Wiebes, has written to parliament to confirm grid companies do not have to pay PV system owners when their installations are disconnected from the network due to capacity issues or poor-quality voltage.

Plus, Australia’s Greens want renewables front and center of the post Covid-19 economy and Mexican plant owners are overturning a politically-motivated ban on clean energy, however, Indian developer Acme solar says pandemic delays warrant it reneging on the terms of the record-low solar price agreement it signed.