FIT cuts

The European Court of Justice has told Solar Ileias Bompaina that it must pay the costs of both parties in a seven-year dispute stemming from the former Greek government’s move to reduce solar feed-in tariffs and claw back historic payments.

The latest global PV industry outlook published by trade group SolarPower Europe, has indicated tight supply of the solar panel raw material is expected to persist this year but the trade body said it would be unlikely to drive further price rises.

If a call by the Ministry of Energy to procure 155 MW of solar next year is adopted, a first, 50 MW auction would be held in June.

With the International Energy Agency publishing its latest five-year clean energy forecast today, pv magazine takes a look at the solar content of the 162-page document.

The draft feed-in tariff scheme should be approved by the end of the month. Payments for residential solar systems are expected to fall only 0.34% but those for utility scale solar may be reduced by 2.2%. An increase is set to be granted to projects in remote areas and also to those which rely on high-efficiency modules.

Prime minister Su Tseng-chang announced the ambition and said the new solar plan for 2019-20 will bring investment and business opportunities of around US$7.5 billion.

Last month’s jump in new installations was mainly due to the pending FIT cut for installations not larger than 750 kW.

With the transition to an auction procurement mechanism under way, Japan is this year set to expand the range of projects subject to the tender system from 2 MW-plus to 500 kW and above. With certain FIT cuts for projects with more than 2 MW capacity set to take effect in the second half of the year, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has now proposed reducing tariffs for 10-500 kW commercial PV systems.

As expected, Germany’s second chamber of parliament has passed a new package of laws. They will enter into force on January 1, 2019. Among the the changes are the extraordinary FIT cuts for rooftop systems between 40 and 750 kW in size for February, March and April, and new tenders for wind and solar totaling 4 GW.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs is considering scrapping a 6% markup on tariffs paid to high-efficiency modules used in its Green Energy Roof scheme. The markup is said to benefit the local module manufacturing industry, which is currently struggling.