Editors’ Blog

The German government met at the Environment Ministry in Berlin on January 13 to discuss cuts to the state-mandated solar incentives, including the feed-in tariff rate. These cuts have been anticipated for this year due to a steeper overall slide in costs. The FiT has been falling by about 8% per year before dropping 10% in 2010.

The new German Government didn’t spend much time after the recent election to propose changes in the FiT program above and beyond the planned yearly declines. Then under pressure from the PV industry and certain states, politicians became more conciliatory to less than ‘aggressive’ changes, even though it was never made clear what the degree of changes would inevitably be. However, with the increasing belief of a growing number of industry observers and players, PV installations in the country are set for record levels, far beyond what the new Government would accept under ‘reasonable’ growth.

A seasonal end of year rush to beat the changes set to take place on tariffs in Germany is on, which is potentially being fuelled further by the continued speculation over further cuts in the FiT, due to the new German Government. Germany was expected to be the largest market in 2009 for new PV installations, after the collapse of the Spanish market last year. However, a prolonged winter and the continued fall-out from the financial crisis meant that installations in Germany may not have met earlier forecasts. 

The Solar America Cities Program was launched as one of the biggest efforts at the Department of Energy aimed towards the adoption of renewable energy in a country with one of the largest carbon boot prints in the world. The program, which saw partnership with 25 cities, made for a huge amount of success as 40 individual solar projects were eventually erected. The time has now come for the DOE to build on this success as it brings out a must-have resource for prospective cities: 'Solar Power in Your Community: A Guide for Local Governments.' Speaking with Charlie Hemmeline, head of the project based at the Department, I delved beneath the surface of the next stage of the Solar America Cities Program.

Many industries worldwide are paying more attention to their energy supply, moving slowly but surely down renewable avenues. One industry some may be surprised to find investing in the green energy sector is the multi-billion sports industry. Over the last couple of months, more and more sports companies have announced the use of renewable, and in particular solar PV, installations. Among the most recent to announce these initiatives are the UK's Sheffield Wednesday, Barcelona's RCD Espanyol football club and Italy's Bentegodi Stadium in Verona.

Not all the news from First Solar’s second-quarter conference call was good. Granted, the CdTe thin film leader impressed again with its continued benchmark performance on productivity, lowest cost per watt and revenue generation, however the sombre note regarded pricing pressure seen from the traditional c-Si module manufacturers.

Cabot Consultants, the national search firm with practice areas in technology, clean tech, and renewable energy, has announced its first annual list of "Women to Watch in Solar Energy."

Take any market research firm’s data on end-user demand for solar modules and compare that with manufacturing supply and there is a massive gap to the negative, pushing prices lower from bare wafers to modules. Last week, Q-Cells binned its forecast for revenue for 2009, citing continued lack of demand and falling prices due to the competitive landscape caused by overcapacity.

After a slow start, this year’s PV Industry Forum, the traditional opening conference of Intersolar Week in Munich, finally got going during the last session of the day with a resounding call to action from none other than Q-Cells’ boss, Anton Milner. The conference opened with the usual slides and the usual suspects giving their views of the overall solar market. The obligatory emerging market was given lip service--this time it was India--while the rest of the presentations mostly failed to engage the audience in a meaningful way. Things changed during the afternoon....