FITs

Analysts at Fitch Solutions have published a report singling out Spain and Brazil as ‘outperformers’ in the global solar market and labelled Vietnam the “market to watch”. The analysts expect surging growth from the Southeast Asian nation to continue in the coming decade.

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.

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.

In the first four months of the year, over 1.6 GW of solar power generation capacity came online in the country. Next month the FITs for rooftop PV will fall by 1.4%.

The feed-in tariff granted reduces each quarter in line with how much solar capacity was installed in the previous three-month period and the drop will be felt more keenly in sun-rich Corsica and the nation’s overseas territories than on the mainland.

Although the National Energy Administration (NEA) held a seminar to talk about the development of the 13th five-year plan last November, a positive signal for domestic demand, the Chinese government still has not released new official targets for solar, as of February 2019.

Overall, the country’s cumulative installed PV power has now surpassed 45.55 GW. In the first 11 months of 2018, newly registered PV capacity reached 2.6 GW.

In light of the massive Renewable Energy Development Fund deficit, China is looking for new ways to support the further deployment of renewables. German Energy Agency, Dena has prepared a new report, detailing how the country can move away from FITs to a more sustainable financing framework. Overall, it points to the increasing importance of auctions; and discusses how the right policy design can improve the cost competitiveness of renewable energies.

The South African Photovoltaic Industry Association (SAPVIA) has called on the country’s government for more PV support. Energy specialist, Chris Ahlfeldt comments on the five point PV plan, which envisages 1.5 GW of new installs annually, and the creation of 55,000 jobs. He also discusses the ongoing issue of the 27 unsigned PPAs, and the bottlenecks in the market.

In addition to the Green Savings Programe, the Czech government has now started to provide solar incentives through the Operational Program for Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Competitiveness (OPPIK).