Morning brief: Bifacial solar panels stay tariff-free, Musk’s $775M payout, G.E. sells lighting business

Court keeps tariff exclusion for bifacial panels: Solar companies can continue to import two-sided solar panels without a tariff, a trade court ruled on Wednesday. The Court of International Trade rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove a preliminary junction on the U.S. Trade Representative’s effort to put a tariff on bifacial solar panel imports. Judge Gary Katzmann named a series of missteps made by the USTR in its filing to impose the tariff. Source: Politico

Enel X North America installed a solar-plus-storage microgrid project at the San Diego Blood Bank. The solar-plus-storage system will allow the Blood Bank to generate and store renewable power, which it can deploy when energy demand and cost is higher. Amid the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, the system will offer cost savings, allowing the organization to focus on the supply of blood to hospitals across the San Diego, Orange, Imperial, and Los Angeles counties, as well as providing antibody tests in the region’s fight against Covid-19. Source: Enel X

G.E., with roots that reach back to Thomas Edison’s lightbulb, sold its lighting business to Savant Systems, a home automation firm, for $250 million including assumption of liabilities, according to a source close to the deal. G.E. had sought to offload its lighting division for several years, as it focused on more profitable areas such as renewable energy and health care. G.E. traces its roots to Edison’s experiments in his lab in Menlo Park, N.J. He was the first recipient of a U.S patent for an incandescent lamp in 1880. Sources: New York Times, Wall Street Journal