Ukraine

Risen Energy has announced a 148 MW module order will be completed this month as the Ningbo-based company expects to ship almost 1 GW of product to the country this year.

The Ningbo-based manufacturer shipped more than a quarter of the panels it exported in the first six months of the year to the eastern European nation. All the big manufacturers posted rising shipment volumes as emerging markets made up for slow growth in their homeland.

The Norwegian developer has opened plants in Ukraine and Egypt. Scatec Solar recently announced it managed to triple energy production in the last year.

Quasi-governmental body the CPIA has released first-half figures for the world’s biggest solar marketplace which show production volumes for export markets continuing to expand and the domestic picture set to rebound after public solar subsidy levels were published.

The final segment in pv magazine’s look at unsung solar markets heads to Ukraine, where a generous feed in tariff and developments in the corporate PPA segment looks likely to push installations past the 1 GW mark for 2019.

The IPP released its latest financial figures and leadership says that with growth across all business units, Q2 2019 is its best quarter ever.

While Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and Brazil attracted more funds than last year, China’s transition to an auction-based procurement system and slow performance overall in Europe saw worldwide backing decrease. BloombergNEF does expect investments to ramp up in the second half, however.

With the project, the Norwegian developer has 282 MW under construction and project backlog of 123 MW in Ukraine. The 55 MW Chigirin project will benefit from the generous feed-in tariffs which have secured membership of the gigawatt club for the eastern European nation.

The Ukrainian market has emerged as rather fertile ground for project developers over the last two years, as a newly enacted law has eased uncertainty over the market’s future, with a quota-based auction system set to replace the country’s generous feed-in tariff scheme in 2020.

While the world’s biggest solar manufacturers are confident there are plenty of alternative markets for a rising volume of panel exports, the message spelled out by first-quarter shipment figures is that protectionism works.