A two-year U.S. tariff holiday on solar panels from Southeast Asia expires on Thursday, starting the clock ticking for American project developers to use the huge amount of equipment they stockpiled duty-free over that period by the end of this year.
The dynamic could result in a mini-boom in already red-hot U.S. solar installations, while also annoying the nascent domestic manufacturing industry which is keen to see developers make the switch to American-made gear.
U.S. solar developers accumulated around 35 gigawatts (GW) of imported panels in U.S. warehouses since President Joe Biden lifted the duties on Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in 2022 to help speed domestic projects to fight climate change, according to energy advisory firm Clean Energy Associates.
That is nearly as much solar capacity as the U.S. will install during all of 2024, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie.
The vast majority of the inventory is believed to have come from the targeted countries, and once the tariffs snap back into place on June 6, companies will have just 180 days to use that Southeast Asian stock or they will need to pay up.