Weekly Review

PV market news this week：

1.Australia launches investment in clean energy manufacturing and energy bill rebate in budget

The Australian federal government's 2024-2025 budget includes a major investment in clean energy manufacturing and an energy bill rebate for households.?Treasurer Dr.?Jim Chalmers announced the budget?on 14 May. It covers fiscal policy for the next decade and comes a year ahead of the deadline for holding the country's next general election.

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2.Biden to increase Section 301 tariffs on solar cells to 50%

US President Joe Biden has announced a series of tariffs directed towards Chinese goods, including solar cells.?Under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, solar cells – whether assembled or not into modules – tariffs will increase from 25% to 50% this year in a move to "protect against China's policy-driven overcapacity that depresses prices and inhibits the development of solar capacity outside of China."

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3.ACP: US adds 4.6GW of solar in Q1 2024, total installed capacity reaches 100GW

The US added 4,557MW of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2024, bringing the total installed capacity to over 100GW, according to the American Clean Power Association (ACP). In its quarterly report for the US market, the ACP said project developers in the US commissioned 111 utility-scale solar, battery energy storage system (BESS) and wind projects in Q1, adding 5,585MW of clean power capacity to the grid. This represented a 28% increased compared to the same quarter in 2023.

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4.Australia approves 800MW solar-plus-storage project in Queensland

The Australian government has approved an 800MW solar-plus-storage project in Southern Queensland. Developed by SkyLab, the Punchs Creek Solar Farm will be paired with a 250MW battery energy storage system (BESS). Although stated as having a 250MW output by the Australian government, the BESS unit could have an output of 200MW and a capacity of 250MWh, as covered previously by our sister-site Energy-storage.news .

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5.European Commission publishes new recommendations for renewables permitting and installation

The European Commission (EC) has published new recommendations to encourage the faster permitting and installation of new renewable power projects within the EU, as the bloc looks to further decarbonise its energy mix.?The recommendations include a number of new practices for energy infrastructure, including speeding up the permit-granting process, and fast-tracking the approval of projects to be built in areas where the project is unlikely to do significant environmental damage. The EC has also called for auctions to be "more harmonised and efficient," to better attract new investment to the European power space, and for community-owned renewable projects to be offered access to simplified permitting processes, to speed up the commissioning of such projects.

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6.New guide to improve biodiversity of PV projects in Australia

The Community Power Agency said its new guide offers strategies and practical methods for developers of large-scale PV projects so they can handle land-use conflicts and adopt regenerative farming techniques, including "conservoltaics" and "agrivoltaics."?The group in New South Wales said the Building Better Biodiversity on Solar Farms Guide will help solar projects to meet new and emerging drivers for better environmental performance and stewardship of the sites they lease or acquire. The guide calls for developers, landowners, and consultants to adopt a conservoltaic approach, which combines nature conservation and solar systems, to leave the natural environment at solar project sites in a measurably better state.

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8.Germany's January-April solar installations hit 5 GW

Germany installed 1,040MW of new PV capacity in April, according to the latest figures from the Bundesnetzagentur. This compares to 881MW in April 2023. In the first four months of this year, newly installed PV capacity hit 4.98GW in Germany, from around 3.71GW in the same period a year earlier. The country's cumulative installed solar capacity reached 87.57GW at the end of April 2024. In order to reach its 2030 solar target of 215GW, the country will need to add at least 1.55GW of new solar every month.

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9.India to add 14.5 GW of PV per year in fiscal 2025?and 2026

India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said it expects India’s annual renewable capacity additions to remain at 15 GW to 18 GW in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026. It said 75% to 80% of annual installations, or up to 14.5 GW, will come from solar and around 20% from wind. Installations will be driven by a significant reduction in equipment prices, ongoing policy support, the availability of liquidity, and the investment plans of large corporate players.