Until now, the PV market benefited from favourable feed-in tariffs (FiTs), plunging module prices and rising efficiencies throughout the last few years and months- in Italy alone, module prices dropped by 42.2% between the fourth quarter of 2008 and third quarter of 2010.
Despite this, drastic cuts across European FiTs have hit the industry hard, and the pressure shows no sign of easing. In fact, analysts have suggested a ‘domino effect’, with France’s subsidies slashed, the Czech Republic market severely limited and an additional decrease of the German FiT by 13% from January 2011, the industry is expecting a stagnating market in 2011, resulting in increased price competition with low cost Asian manufacturers.
It’s against this backdrop of tough competition and plummeting module prices that PV companies are increasingly turning to Balance of Systems as a way of reducing costs and maximizing efficiency in PV systems, and PV-Insider have launched the PV Balance of Systems Conference & Expo (Berlin, June 28-28) to help the industry tackle the technical BoS challenges that in the current climate can make the difference between profit and loss for your plant.
Attendees at the Balance of Systems event that took place last November in San Jose (run by the same organisers) commented that this event was “extremely valuable in gaining an overall view of engineering and financial challenges applicable to optimising PV BoS”, and others that “the conference was a great format to start talking details about how we can truly reduce the overall cost of PV... a win-win opportunity!’”. The European event promises to be even more critical for PV installers and EPCs faced with substantial challenges in light of the FiT changes.
PV Plants Map
Meanwhile, as part of the launch of its new brand, PV-Insider has commissioned an easy-to-read PV Plants Map, displaying the 100 largest PV installations, both in Europe and worldwide. The PV market intelligence provider also revealed this week that it is working on creating a resource of all planned large scale PV plants, not just those in operation.
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