Preview Newsletter
SFCE 9/29
-
Japan NTT builds 33 MW PV plant in Miyazaki prefecture
Sep 28, 2015 | See News Renewables
By Lucas Morais
NTT itself has taken charge for the design and construction. Solar panels are being supplied by Suntech Power Japan Corp, part of Chinese Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd (NYSE:STP). -
Japan: Thai utility eyes 100 MW plant, Mitsubishi UFJ to invest in Fukushima project
Sep 29, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Ian Clover
The project will be constructed on a former golf course using solar panels supplied by Suntech Power Japan corp. Commercial operation is scheduled for January, 2017. -
Silicon module ‘super league’ targets 40% market share in 2015
Sep 28, 2015 | PV Tech
By Finlay Colville
The dynamics of PV manufacturing and shipments has been going through a fundamental shift in the past 12-18 months, with the big-six breakaway c-Si Module Super League contingent targeting 40% market-share in 2015. -
Australia leads world in residential solar penetration
Sep 29, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Jonathan Gifford
The Energy Supply Association of Australia has published a report that shows that with a national average of 15% penetration, the country leads the way in terms of residential rooftop solar. Belgium has the second highest rate, according to the report, with 7%. -
With cap and trade plan, China adopts emissions policy that couldn’t get through U.S. Congress
Sep 28, 2015 | Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
China may be the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to make his new commitment to introduce a nationwide cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions a centerpiece of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Monday morning.
Suntech News
Industry News
-
Japan NTT builds 33 MW PV plant in Miyazaki prefecture
Sep 28, 2015 | See News Renewables
By Lucas Morais
Japan NTT Facilities Inc, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (TYO:9432), annouced last week it is building a 32.6-MW solar power plant in Kunitomi city, Miyazaki prefecture.
The construction of the Miyazaki Kamenoko Solar Power Plant, which is being build at a former golf course, is scheduled to complete on January 5, 2017, according estimates from NTT.
The expected annual energy production of the plant comes in at 40,000 MWh, enough to supply the consumption of some 11,000 local households.
NTT itself has taken charge for the design and construction. Solar panels are being supplied by Suntech Power Japan Corp, part of Chinese Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd (NYSE:STP). The power conditioning system (PCS) is manufactured by Japanese diversified group Hitachi Ltd.
Japan aims to add 28 GW of solar capacity by 2020 in an effort to promote the use of renewable energy sources.
http://renewables.seenews.com/news/japan-ntt-builds-33-mw-pv-plant-in-miyazaki-prefecture-494917
-
Japan: Thai utility eyes 100 MW plant, Mitsubishi UFJ to invest in Fukushima project
Sep 29, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Ian Clover
Two large-scale solar PV projects have entered the planning phase in Japan this week following investment announcements from Thai, Taiwanese and Japanese backers.
Ratchaburi Electricity, which is the largest power producer in Thailand, is to invest in a 100 MW solar PV project in Japan via a joint venture (JV) with Taiwan’s Huang Ming, reports Reuters.
Meanwhile, four leading lending institutions are partnering to back a 15.8 billion yen ($132 million), 53 MW solar PV project in the country’s Fukushima prefecture in what will become the largest single solar installation in region to date.
Ratchaburi chief executive Pongdith Potchana confirmed that the JV with Haung Ming is the first step in moves to augment further collaboration with Thailand’s PTT Pcl and Japan’s Chubu Electric Power Group to boost investment in overseas power projects.
The utility first announced its intention to enter the Japanese solar market in 2014, but this is the first concrete detail to emerge regarding its construction and development plans.
In Fukushima, the proposed 53 MW solar farm will be backed by four banks, including Mitsubishi UFJ, Sendai-based 77 Bank - which will provide the most funding for the project, at $57 million – and two other lenders.
The Renatosu Soma Solar Park will become the largest of its kind in Fukushima Prefecture, which has turned its attentions to solar power following the devastating aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Japan NTT Facilities, which is a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, also announced this week that it is to create a 32.6 MW solar PV plant in Kunitomi city, Miyazaki prefecture.
The project will be constructed on a former golf course using solar panels supplied by Suntech Power Japan corp. Commercial operation is scheduled for January, 2017.
http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/japan--thai-utility-eyes-100-mw-plant--mitsubishi-ufj-to-invest-in-fukushima-project_100021285/#ixzz3n8ISvZMx
-
Silicon module ‘super league’ targets 40% market share in 2015
Sep 28, 2015 | PV Tech
By Finlay Colville
The dynamics of PV manufacturing and shipments has been going through a fundamental shift in the past 12-18 months, with the big-six breakaway c-Si Module Super League contingent targeting 40% market-share in 2015.
Understanding exactly how this has come about, what it means for capacity expansions and capex, and how this translates to PV technology roadmaps and PV equipment spending is a massive deal right now for the industry and its observers.
To coincide with the countdown to PV Tech parent company Solar Media's forthcoming 'PV Manufacturing & Technology Quarterly' report, we will be discussing and reviewing these key issues and themes in weekly blogs in PV Tech over the coming months.
This feature kicks off with the need for a reclassification of solar PV manufacturers, the market share aspirations of the big six Super League, and why relying on a legacy tier-level nomenclature is acting somewhat as a barrier to a more useful segmentation on PV manufacturing today.The Silicon Module Super League
Recently PV-Tech senior news editor Mark Osborne explained succinctly how a select group of six c-Si module suppliers had significantly increased shipment guidance in the past 12 months, with the module leaders citing annual shipment targets as high as 5GW for 2015.
The feature suggested a reclassification of this ‘Super League’ of module suppliers, to differentiate from thin-film competitors and other c-Si module suppliers that were in effect capacity constrained, and unable to keep up with the market-share aspirations of the leading pack.
Indeed, there are many reasons for ring-fencing the big-six of Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q-Cells, JA Solar, Jinko Solar, Trina Solar and Yingli Green – not simply the shipment forecasts. Importantly, each of these suppliers is manufacturing-focused, typically with balanced cell/module capacities and varying degrees of ingot/wafer capacity. Each participates strongly in the largest PV market in the world today – China. And each has the scope to quickly scale capacity using what has become known in the past few years in the PV industry as the ‘asset-lite’ approach.
These factors separate the big-six from traditional, global competitors such as the two thin-film major players (First Solar and Solar Frontier) and other GW-level c-Si manufacturers/suppliers such as SunPower, REC Solar, Kyocera, Panasonic, SolarWorld and all others. Of course, it could be argued that Yingli’s selection in the Super League is in question, but we can return to that later at the end of the year.
We will touch on the key themes that differentiate the big-six in forthcoming articles in PV-Tech, but for now, placing these six c-Si powerhouses into a Silicon Module Super League category allows us to examine the business models and strategies of these companies collectively, and in comparison to all other c-Si and thin-film challengers.The Silicon Module Super League: Market share gains
Figure 1 (left) shows the capacities, shipments and market-share of the six companies, when treated as a single entity. Capacities are effective annualised levels, and shipments include third-party and in-house project deliveries (effectively non-GAAP figures) to best understand supply and demand.
Historic data for Hanwha Q-CELLS and Hanwha SolarOne for 2013 and 2014 is consolidated also, to align with the updated Hanwha reporting in 2015.
There are several takeaways from the graphic. The most important one is the picture of a group of six companies that are expected to move from 33% market share of module shipments (in 2013) to approximately 40% during 2015. Indeed, the Silicon Module Super League is forecast to ship a staggering 23GW of modules (external and in-house projects) during 2015.
At first glance, it looks like module shipments are closely following module capacity levels, but don’t let this fool you for one second. This is just an aggregated capacity build-up; at the individual supplier level, the capacity ranges from heavily underutilized (the case of Yingli Green in 2015) to those relying on GW+ levels of third-party outsourced module production.
In fact, as we dive deeper into the in-house versus outsourced production issue for the six companies and across their value-chains from ingot to module, a whole range of issues emerges.
For example, 30% of modules shipped by the big-six in 2015 will contain c-Si cells manufactured by other companies. Interestingly, it now becomes clear that shipping high efficiency modules (let’s say PERC modules) does not actually rely upon having any PERC cell production capacity, but being able to source sufficient PERC cells from say Taiwan. More on this later, as it could become a further differentiator to those c-Si manufacturers that can state with certainty all their modules have in-house cells inside, for example.Time to get rid of the tier categories in solar
Segmenting PV manufacturers into tier categories became fashionable in 2010, but when introduced it was intended to indicate that a company was a major manufacturer (like our big six above), with a significant global market-share. Over the years, the tier term has been hijacked and distorted to the point that it now has almost no value or meaning whatsoever.
Tier was never meant to be a way of assigning bankability – as though any term can possibly capture bankability, in the first instance. Barely a week passes without some largely-unknown module-only supplier (say with a few MW of capacity) proclaiming having been included on someone’s tier 1 listing.
If everyone can find a reason to be on someone’s tier 1 list, then surely we have got to the point that the whole tier thing is irrelevant? Cases when companies claimed to be on someone’s tier 1 list only to announce impending bankruptcy shortly after are not isolated instances.
Basically, since there is no meaningful definition of tiers, and it certainly should not be linked to anything like bankability, the need for better manufacturing groupings becomes all the more apparent.
Over the next couple of months, we will focus on key PV manufacturing and technology issues that are much more relevant to the industry at large, and what is important for capex and PV equipment supply moving into 2016.
http://www.pv-tech.org/editors_blog/silicon_module_super_league_targets_40_market_share_in_2015
-
Australia leads world in residential solar penetration
Sep 29, 2015 | PV Magazine
By Jonathan Gifford
The Energy Supply Association of Australia has published a report that shows that with a national average of 15% penetration, the country leads the way in terms of residential rooftop solar. Belgium has the second highest rate, according to the report, with 7%.
“We're clearly leading the world in rooftop solar,” said Energy Supply Association CEO Matthew Warren, in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Most other countries are in low single digits, so we're kind of pioneering the experiment of rooftop solar and the world is watching,” Warren told ABC Radio National.
While Belgium may be in second place with regards to penetration, the market size is far smaller than Australia’s. Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts Belgium to install some 65 MW of PV in 2015, while Australia should push over 1 GW.
Belgium does trump Australia in terms of installed PV capacity per capita, according to the report. Rather predictably Germany leads the way with 0.47kW per capita (PC), followed by Italy (31kW/PC), and Belgium (0.28kW/PC). Australia (0.19kW/PC) comes in sixth place.
Where Australia falls behind in the global solar rankings is in the large scale sector. Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) figures anticipate that Australia’s large scale capacity will total less than 300 MW by year’s end, a most meager sum given the state of California alone has some 7.3 GW of utility scale solar alone.
“It's one of those peculiarities,” Warren told the ABC. “We've seen almost no utility scale in Australia, whereas countries like Germany and the U.S. have predominantly utility scale solar, and that's been because of the way our renewable energy target has been designed. So it's tended to bias us towards lowest-cost renewable generation like wind at the expense of slightly higher-cost utility scale like solar.”
The CEFC and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) are targeting an additional 300 MW of large scale solar in two new funding programs. ARENA is making AU$100 million (US$70 million) available for projects larger than 5 MW with the CEFC rolling out a complimentary program of loans, worth AU$250 million.
The ARENA program alone targets 200 MW of capacity, with the body having previously supported some of the around 211 MW that is operational or under construction at the Broken Hill (53 MW), Nyngan (102 MW) and Moree (56 MW) farm sites. Smaller projects include the Royalla Solar Farm (24 MW) and Greenough River Project (10 MW).
Both the CEFC and ARENA say that the goal of their latest programs is to reduce the cost of large scale solar in Australia. If prices of AU$70 - $90 million/MWh can be achieved, then large scale solar can compete with wind projects in the country. ARENA targets projects with a cost of around $130/MWh under its latest funding round.
“Within Australia to get to that point of $130/MWh is a significant milestone,” the CEFC’s chief investment officer Theodore Dow told pv magazine. “It wasn’t that long ago that prices like $170/MWh were the norm.”
Oversight of both ARENA and CEFC has been transferred to the federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt, since Malcolm Turnbull was installed as Prime Minister by his party earlier this month.
Http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/australia-leads-world-in-residential-solar-penetration_100021291/#ixzz3n8K7meBM
-
With cap and trade plan, China adopts emissions policy that couldn’t get through U.S. Congress
Sep 28, 2015 | Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
China may be the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, but Chinese President Xi Jinping is likely to make his new commitment to introduce a nationwide cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions a centerpiece of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Monday morning.
But far from the television lights of New York, the effectiveness of an emissions trading system, now being used by seven Chinese cities, will hinge on how the system is designed and implemented. Emissions trading has had a mixed track record in the European Union. And the rollercoaster year in China’s own equity markets raises questions about whether a market in greenhouse gas permits there can be any more stable and transparent.
“On the surface, Communist China has the opportunity to create a far more economically efficient emissions reduction effort than the command and control regulations which the supposedly free market U.S. has adopted,” said Paul Bledsoe, an energy consultant and former Clinton White House official on climate. “But whether China can accomplish the transparency needed to instill market confidence is an open question.”
Transparency – or lack of it – has been the major issue in China’s own pilot programs. In a government-created market, the rules government lays down for emissions levels and which emissions are targeted are critical. But people who have advised the Chinese government say the lessons from the pilot programs will make the nationwide plan stronger.
“In the short term I don’t think it will be the major way China reduces emissions,” Song Ranping, climate expert at the World Resources Institute, said in an interview. “The main drivers will be other policies like energy efficiency policies and renewable energy policies. But over the long term, an emissions trading scheme does have the potential to be the main driver of carbon reductions.”
The cap and trade scheme for controlling pollution was pioneered in the United States to reduce power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which cause acid rain. Under the Clean Air Act of 1990, the government established a mandatory cap on emissions and allowed companies the flexibility to figure out how to comply. The power companies ended up cutting emissions sharply and at much lower cost than anticipated. By 2013, sulfur dioxide emissions plunged 80 percent to a level well below the statutory requirement.
But Europe’s cap and trade program for greenhouse gas pollution has failed in many respects. Launched in 2005, it covered 13,200 facilities, responsible for about half the European Union’s emissions. But the cap was set too high and was easily reached, especially after the 2009 recession and with lingering economic weakness in Europe. Carbon emission permit prices collapsed from around $40 per metric ton of carbon to single digits. Recently prices have crawled back up to about $10, still providing companies little incentive for cutting greenhouse gas output. The system currently has a glut of more than two billion emissions permits.
In 2006, California adopted legislation setting up a carbon trading scheme, but it took a few years before the details could be ironed out. It aims to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, an 18 percent reduction from projected business as usual levels. It is still early going for the plan, but permit prices have been fluctuating between $15 and $20 a metric ton of carbon in the power sector.
During Obama’s first year in office, the House of Representatives adopted a complicated cap and trade plan known as the Waxman-Markey bill, but the plan died in the Senate after an aggressive lobbying campaign led by oil and coal companies. It was never brought to the Senate floor for debate or vote. Many experts also cited the plan’s complexity and its assumption that technology developments would help firms comply.
China’s own pilot projects in emissions trading have been varied. Guangdong’s is the biggest and only one to auction some emissions permits, providing the government there with extra revenue. Shanghai is the only one requiring domestic airlines to buy permits, something Europe has been looking to do but which has run into vociferous objections in the United States. And Shenzhen and Tianjin both allow individual investors and financial institutions to trade emissions permits, boosting trading volume – and possibly price volatility. Over the last six months of 2013, Shenzhen’s carbon price fluctuated from 28 renminbi to 130 renminbi ($4.50 to $20).
Unlike many Chinese cities, Beijing and Shenzhen have small industrial sectors and large service economies. So in order to increase the percentage of emissions covered by their trading systems, both Beijing and Shenzhen have required key service firms to join the schemes. Beijing is the only pilot that requires annual absolute emission reductions for existing facilities in the manufacturing and service sectors. By this year, companies in Beijing will receive allowances for just 94 percent of their average emissions between 2009 and 2012, according to Song.
The pilots carry some important lessons for a national program in China. “Since electricity prices are heavily regulated in China, power plants cannot pass their carbon costs on to consumers through electricity prices,” Song wrote last year . “This policy therefore provides little incentive for demand-side electricity management.”
“These cities know that if they are going to have credibility that the underlying currency needs to be solid,” said Christopher James, a principal in the China programs of the Regulatory Assistance Project, a group of former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulators and former public utility commission members.
James says that China’s President Xi’s announcement of “green dispatch” requirements was just as important as the cap and trade scheme. The “green dispatch” system will give non-carbon producing renewable energy projects top priority on the electricity grid even if that means cutting back on electricity produced with fossil fuels, usually at cheaper prices.
Currently, all Chinese power generators are required to run 5,000 hours a year, regardless of economic or pollution costs. Thus a new efficient coal plant runs now more than an old, costly, highly polluting coal plant, said James. “From a grid operation viewpoint, I guess it’s pretty simple but it does not at all result in dispatching the most economic units first or reward efficiencies,” he said. He said several percent of the capacity of wind projects in northwest China were not connected to the grid.
From 2006 to 2010, China closed down 72 gigawatts of inefficient coal plants – equal to three times the capacity of New England’s electricity grid. Under the 12th five year plan, China has shut down an additional 40 gigawatts, but many remain.
The new green dispatch rules also will make room for new renewable projects, which China has vowed to double. While building coal plants at a breathtaking pace, for the past six years China has also been the world’s largest investor in renewables and other clean power sources and it is now number one in installed wind and soon will be for installed solar photovoltaic panels too.
Once considered a laggard on climate issues, China has been frequently cited by American politicians and corporate executives as evidence of the futility of actions designed to limit greenhouse gases elsewhere. Now, however, China might not be so easy to use an excuse for inaction in the United States, Obama administration officials and others said.
Carol Browner, former climate adviser to Obama and Environmental Protection Agency chief under President Clinton, said in an e-mail that “with China’s commitment, opponents of climate action here in the U.S. are running out of excuses, unfortunately not as quickly as the earth is running out of time.”
But Chinese leaders have been motivated not only by President Obama’s relentless pressure for international action on climate change, but also by domestic anger over the severe bouts of conventional air pollution in China, much of it smaller than 2.5 micrometers, particularly harmful for respiratory illnesses.
“It merits mention that success with the emission trading system can be a one-two punch helping to lower both CO2 and PM2.5-the latter the main source of the crippling pollution in Chinese cities,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “The air pollution problem is a big motivator for Xi to push this and the cities to try to implement the emissions trading system — along with all the other regulations and rules coming out on air pollution.”
Suntech News
Industry News
Add recipients
Suggested