Last week, Germany gave solar investors the jitters as word started to spread about a sooner-than-expected, and possibly steeper-than-expected, cut to the country's feed-in tariff. This week brought a bit more clarity on that front, but the matter is far from settled.
Germany's environment minister issued a proposal Wednesday featuring the following components:
- A 15% drop in rooftop rates from April 1 and ground-mounted rates from July 1.
- A 25% drop in rates for ground-mounted installations on farmland.
- An additional 2.5% cut if annual capacity additions exceed 3.5 gigawatts, and again at 4.5 gigawatts.
- A 2.5% boost if annual installations fall below 2.5 gigawatts.
While German solar lobbyists are howling that this proposal will cause insolvencies across their groups' 800 members, other lawmakers are seeking steeper cuts. We'll see where this shakes out as legislation is hammered out over the next two months or so.
Importantly, Germany is not placing a cap on its tariff, which is what torpedoed Spanish demand for SunPower
A Citigroup
This week wasn't all about Germany, of course. There were several notable deals on the utility-scale front. A U.S. subsidiary of Spain's Fotowatio landed a major deal to install up to 500 megawatts of solar power at Edwards Air Force Base in California. A Korean consortium led by Samsung and Korea Electric Power
The notable thing about Ontario is that the province has written a 50% local content requirement into its feed-in tariff (which rises to 60% in 2011). Anyone with manufacturing operations in Ontario could thus see a major windfall. I explained Canadian Solar's