While there is no shortage of leading indicators in the PV industry that can be used to predict future trends in manufacturing and across the various companies involved in this space, one of the most pertinent ones relates to capital expenditure (or capex).
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) SunShot has announced a new US$30 million for solar integration projects, as the initiative is in hot water after president Trump indicated plans for its closure.
US-based PV module manufacturer Mission Solar is to cut its existing workforce by a further 58% after closing its solar cell production lines at its facilities in San Antonio, Texas in October 2016.
Massachusetts has introduced major restructuring of its solar energy incentives, with the Department of Energy Resources (DOER) extending the Renewable Energy Credit programme (SREC) further into 2017.
In the past few days, we have featured some of the key trends in the solar industry during 2016, including the changing face of c-Si cell spending and the strong capex into new facilities in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The technology split of solar cells produced in 2016 was also reviewed, showing the resilience of p-type multi and the factors that have been holding back further market-share gains for p-type mono.
President Trump’s administration would be “shooting itself in the foot” if it closed the US department of energy’s Sunshot Initiative, according to the programme’s former director Minh Le.
NextEra Energy Resources, a subsidiary of Florida’s NextEra Energy, is to build Wisconsin’s largest solar project – the 100MW Solar Energy Centre in Point Beach.
