Tariffs

The U.S. authorities are currently subjecting imported bifacial modules to a 20% penalty – the same tariff applied to almost all other crystalline silicon solar modules.

The Indian government’s levy on modules could almost double to 40% within a year. Cells will see a similar rise, from an initial rate of 15%.

The global power and renewable energy market is expected to remain largely unaffected by the Trump administration’s new wave of tariffs on Chinese goods. Although shipments of Chinese modules into the U.S. market are falling, Chinese manufacturers sent more panels to overseas markets in the first half of this year than they did in the same period of 2018. Analysts from Fitch, meanwhile, claim the U.S. solar market will continue to expand, despite higher project costs.

Panasonic offloaded some of its PV interests to Chinese HJT cell maker GS-Solar and Kyocera is advertising further savings from its solar operations but neither business unit acted as a significant drag on wider group figures.

With Narendra Modi’s government stunning pollsters with another huge win, the solar industry expects renewable power momentum to be maintained with steps including anti-dumping duty on solar module imports, a national policy for rooftop solar and an emphasis on easing private-sector participation in the power sector.

U.S. President Donald Trump has removed Turkey from the list of developing nations that are exempted from Section 201 tariffs on PV cells and modules.

While the lifting of any tariffs is welcome news to the U.S. solar industry, manufacturers say low materials prices are unlikely to return as long as protectionist measures elsewhere remain in place.

Most large manufacturers supplying the inverter market have diversified production outside of China, but this will affect Huawei and other Chinese inverter makers, as well as U.S. module makers.

Despite a number of unfavorable policy announcements, the global PV market still added 101 GW in 2018. It looks likely that this momentum will continue this year, with as much as 110 GW of new capacity expected.

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.