Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 62. Sunrise is 5:43 and sunset is 8:00, for 14 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 60.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Unified School District Board meets in open session at 6:30 PM, then enters closed session at 6:50 PM.
On this day in 1862, commemorated as Cinco de Mayo, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico.
Solar farms are controversial in many communities, as with the Whitewater Solar Project. There’s another aspect of solar projects to consider. Tariffs will make the projects more expensive:
President Donald Trump has slapped 145 percent tariffs on China, which accounts for an estimated roughly 80 percent of the world’s solar manufacturing capacity. Trump also implemented 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.
Additionally, the Trump administration announced planned tariffs on Chinese solar products sold from southeast Asia, ranging from 41 percent to more than 3,500 percent depending on the country. Those tariffs still need to be finalized and would require a vote by the International Trade Commission.
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Ismaeel Chartier, development director at RENEW Wisconsin, said the combination of tariffs could make some projects in the state “economically unfeasible,” especially if the tariffs on imports from southeast Asia take effect.
“They no longer ink out,” he said. “The return on investment is not a 10-year return on investment, it becomes a 30-, 40-, 50-year return on investment.”
The tariffs on steel and aluminum raise the costs of the metal racking used to mount solar panels, while the duties on China and the planned targeted solar tariffs would increase the costs of panels themselves, Chartier said.
See Joe Schulz, Trump tariffs expected to increase costs, limit options for Wisconsin solar
(‘Combination of tariffs on China, steel and southeast Asia could make some projects ‘economically unfeasible’ ‘), Wisconsin Public Radio, May 5, 2025.
I’ve no claim about whether tariffs will make the proposed Whitewater project too costly; they are likely to affect at least some of the nearly 20 Wisconsin projects either underway or awaiting approval.