Market & Trends

The Australian solar industry has welcomed the announcement today by businessman turned politician Clive Palmer that he will support the Renewable Energy Target (RET). The votes of Mr Palmer’s political party to maintain the RET, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Climate Change Commission is likely to reinvigorate the large scale PV sector and maintain support for residential and commercial PV.

The UK’s Solar Trade Association (STA) believes that over last weekend solar PV broke electricity production records in the country. With Midsummer occurring over the weekend, on Saturday, the STA estimates that solar’s production contribution in the country peaked at 7.8% of daytime electricity.

The government parties have come to an agreement on the EEG reform. The policy makes everything more complicated.

Solar crowdfunder Mosaic is encouraging Americans to nominate community buildings on which they would like to see solar installed, on its #PutSolarOnIt national day of action today.

Sunverge Energy has picked up a AUD$3.8 million grant to develop its lithium battery and energy management software system. The grant comes from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Michael Liebreich, the founder and Advisory Board Chair at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) may run to be the next mayor of London. Bookmakers have Liebreich ahead more established politicians.

German module manufacturer Hanwha Q Cells is targeting the high-value PV markets of Japan and within the EU while maintaining its manufacturing operations in Germany as an innovation center. The supplier announced today a 30 MW supply deal with project developer Martifer Solar.

Global equipment supply industry association SEMI has published its Q1 2014 PV equipment market statistics, showing that the book-to-bill ratio broke above parity.

Goetz Fischbeck, the CEO of Smart Solar consulting, looks into SolarCity’s announcement that it will acquire solar cell and module startup Silevo and plans to build a 1 GW manufacturing facility with Silevo technology in New York two years from now.

Greg Hunt, Australia’s environment minister, has avoided questions about whether he had continued to give assurances to the solar industry that the “one-million-solar roofs” initiative would go ahead despite knowing that the policy had been scrapped by his party’s leadership.