Taiwanese solar stocks led by Motech Industries fell in July after the U.S. proposed expanded penalties on solar energy imports in a victory for the U.S. unit of SolarWorld, which accused China of shifting production to Taiwan after it lost an earlier case. Gintech Energy, E-Ton Solar Tech and Neo Solar Power also tumbled. The U.S. Department of Commerce issued a preliminary finding that said overseas producers, including China’s Trina Solar and Taiwan’s Gintech, sold goods in the U.S. at unfairly low prices, and called for duties ranging as high as 165% for some Chinese manufacturers and 44% for those in Taiwan. China hopes the U.S. can handle anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes on Chinese solar products “cautiously,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said, calling for a quick end to the probes. Jennifer Liang, Taipei-based Analyst at KGI Securities, said the duties were higher than the market expected. “The U.S. accounted for about 30% of Taiwanese solar-cell shipments in the past year and a half,” she said. The duties will prompt Taiwanese producers to rely more on Japanese and European markets, she added. A final decision by the U.S. Commerce Department will be made in mid-December. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) will determine by the end of January whether U.S. makers of solar power goods were harmed by the imports. If so, the duties will be permanent. U.S. imports from mainland China and Taiwan of the crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, panels and modules used to make electricity from sunlight were valued at USD2.2 billion last year, the South China Morning Post reported.

China will have to adapt its power grid to use more of its installed solar and wind capacity. Wind farms are built faster than the power grid, designed for conventional energy, can adapt. Consequently, wind operators in some places are paid at times to idle a fifth of their turbines. The problem partly arises because wind and solar, while steady over the long term, fluctuate in the short term. Output peaks can clash with usage peak times on the power grid. Adding more power lines, which takes several years, is the standard solution. However, additional capacity is often underutilized, like empty highways during the day or late at night. Storing electricity is the alternative. For a century, the only realistic storage was pumped hydro. Compressed air, flywheels and molten salts are now gaining attention. The biggest advances are seen in falling prices for advanced chemical batteries. Like solar, batteries are modular, installed in days and work equally well whether distributed among consumers or concentrated in remote storage stations. Storage will increase the economic use of variable renewable energy. For example, batteries near renewable-energy generators soak up electricity otherwise lost to grid congestion. Distributed solar and distant wind farms, when the grid has spare capacity, can charge batteries near consumers. However, developing storage solutions is not simple. In China, State Grid runs the large-scale Zhangbei demonstrator in Hebei province, while battery manufacturer BYD has batteries deployed in Changsha, Hunan province. While other countries are also working on solutions, the world’s biggest storage targets will probably be in China. With experience elsewhere limited, how China optimizes value and integrates storage will be globally significant for policy and the fortunes of manufacturers in a critical new sector for sustainable electricity, Ecological Economist David Fullbrook suggested in the South China Morning Post.

The European Union’s deal to end a trade dispute over solar panels with China risks creating a downward spiral of prices, further damaging the EU producers it is designed to protect. The EU agreed a year ago to allow up to seven gigawatt per year of Chinese solar panels imports free of duties at a fixed minimum price of €0.56 per watt. However, that undertaking includes a potential change to the minimum price each quarter, based on a solar module price index compiled by Bloomberg. The price was cut to €0.53 euro in April. China’s Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products in July wrote to the European Commission seeking to clarify certain aspects of the undertaking. EUProSun, which represents about 40% of EU producers including Germany’s SolarWorld, said the chamber’s clarification was in fact a rewriting of the deal and would result in a continuous decline in prices in Europe. China wants currency fluctuations to be taken into account.

Beijing has set targets for faster growth in installed wind power generation capacity and higher levels of solar power usage up to 2017, though analysts say more financing and subsidies will be needed for them to be realized. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) set a goal of 150 gigawatt (GW) for wind power capacity and 70 GW for solar capacity by 2017. It is part of an objective to see non-fossil fuel supply 13% of the nation’s energy consumption by 2017, up from a target of 11.4% in 2015 and 9.8% last year. From 2001 to 2015 Beijing planned to invest CNY1.8 trillion to develop renewable energy projects to realize a goal of 100 GW of wind power capacity and 35 GW of solar capacity. At the end of last year, China had 77.6 GW of wind power capacity, according to the China National Renewable Energy Center. It also had around 20 GW of solar capacity. In order to reach the new targets, an annual average of 18.1 GW of capacity from wind farms and 12.5 GW of solar capacity would need to be added in the four years to 2017. In January, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said it aimed to add 18 GW of wind farm capacity and 14 GW of solar farm capacity this year. Last year, wind farm installations totaled 14.9 GW, short of the NEA’s target of 18 GW, due to a shortage of power transmission capacity that resulted in lower-than-expected capacity utilization and reduced profits for developers. The grid bottleneck has persisted in the past three years, with substantial relief only seen last year after State Grid Corp of China fast tracked some projects. “To reach the 2017 wind target, more needs to be done on transmission infrastructure expansion, and more financing needs to be made available,” said Michael Parker, Senior Analyst at U.S. brokerage Sanford C. Bernstein. “Project approvals also need to be fast tracked.” For solar farms, last year the industry far exceeded the NEA’s target of 10 GW, installing 12 GW.

The first-ever collaborative project between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to create solar cells for power generation will come to an end this year after a subsidiary of DuPont, DuPont Apollo, said it was stopping production of silicon thin-film modules, which are used in solar cells. The move dealt a blow to cross-border efforts to establish the region as a hub for the research, development and production of solar power technology. The partnership, called the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Innovation Circle, sought to create research and development (R&D) facilities in Hong Kong for the technology that would be manufactured in Shenzhen. It was established in 2008 at the invitation of the Hong Kong and Shenzhen governments as part of the central government’s 11th Five Year Plan. DuPont Apollo had aspired to become one of the world’s top three providers of thin-film photovoltaic modules by next year. Its versatile thin-film products were cheaper to produce as it uses much less silicon than rival crystalline panels. In 2009, it still expected the photovoltaic market to grow exponentially. But a year later, an oversupply of silicon lowered the prices of rival modules, making the technology less competitive. DuPont Apollo ran the project’s production facilities in Shenzhen and an R&D center at the Hong Kong Science Park in Tai Po. DuPont Apollo Chairman Chuck Xu cited a flagging market for the decision to pull the plug on the project. DuPont Apollo would hand back the research and development facility, opened in 2009, to the Science Park when the lease expired in August. The production facility in Shenzhen, which came into full operation in 2010, will be suspended, the South China Morning Post reports.