The tariffs don’t apply to the first 2.5 gigawatts of imports this year, and there’s as much as 5 gigawatts of solar equipment already stashed in warehouses and ports around the country. That’s enough to supply U.S. developers for about six months, said Hugh Bromley, a solar analyst at New Energy Finance, undermining the impact of the protectionist policies on manufacturers. Shipments from exempt suppliers including First Solar Inc. may extend that period to nine months.
SunPower Corp., the second-biggest U.S. solar supplier, manufacturers most of its products in Mexico and Asia, and rushed to bring them into the country at the end of last year. The stockpiled inventory will help the San Jose, California-based company buy time as it pursues a request to be excluded from the duties because it uses a technology that’s different from standard photovoltaic panels.
“Of course we accelerated” shipments, Chief Executive Officer Tom Werner said in an interview. “We’re not going to pay tariffs on goods that we already brought to the U.S.”
Submitted February 16, 2018 at 02:38PM by COMPUTER1313 http://ift.tt/2BAAMms
