First Solar Inc. (Tempe, Arizona, US) has closed its public offering of 9.75 million shares of its common stock, receiving USD 428 million in proceeds. This includes 1.25 million shares issued and sold through the exercise of the underwriters' over-allotment option. First Solar plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisition of solar photovoltaic (PV) projects and the expansion of business units. Read more...

The global solar PV industry is on the cusp of one of its greatest changes. In a development that has divided the industry, the European Union will make a preliminary decision by June 6th 2013 on whether or not to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese PV cells and modules. In September 2013, the EU will issue a preliminary anti-subsidy ruling on these imports. The imposition of duties at the expected level, which is an average of 47% for anti-dumping alone, will doubtless have tremendous impacts up and down the value chain both in the EU and globally. But what exactly will those impacts be? Are tariffs fair? Are they necessary? And how did we get here? These are the issues that Solar Server will explore in our review of the solar trade war. Read more...

Solar Server: Can you give a brief overview of what happened at the Massachusetts DOER meeting on July 7th? Dan Berwick: There were two things: they put out a straw man for the regulation that will expand the program from 400 MW to 1200 MW, but they also intervened in what was a rush on the current 400 MW program. Many months ago DOER announced the intention to create a more robust qualification process for projects in the existing 400 MW program, but in the run-up to when that more robust qualification process got implemented, everyone with a project in the queue rushed to get their project in under the current lower standards for qualification to generate SRECs. Which is a very rational thing to do, to apply under the more lax standards before the tighter standards are implemented. Read more...

Before examining the reasons surrounding India’s solar manufacturing anti-dumping investigation, one overarching point must be made clear: India needs power. It is estimated that there are roughly 400 million Indians without access to power – roughly a third of the country, according to World Bank. India has the largest population without power of any country, even after the government had committed to provide power to all Indians by 2012 as part of their “power for all” pledge. The people and businesses that do have power face acute power shortages – about 9 percent power deficit and about 10 percent peak power shortage. A few months ago India faced one of the largest blackouts ever, when 600 million people were out of power for several days due in large part to insufficient power generation. Read more...