PV Market Alliance sees moderate growth in solar market last year

The PV Market Alliance, an international panel of solar power experts from the United States, Europe, Latin America, Japan and China, believes the market stabilized and actually enjoyed moderate growth in the year just past.

Although concede that hard data for actual PV installation in the fourth quarter is still coming in, they expect the number for all of 2014 to be between 40 GW and 42 GW.

This compares to 37 GW in photovoltaic installations in 2013 (about 3 GW lower than had been anticipated for the year.).

The group says emerging business models that engage electricity consumers are driving a resurgence of distributed generation PV installations worldwide even as utility scale deployment continues to drive installations.

Strong progress was observed in several regions, including Asia, North and Latin America and South Africa, the alliance says.

Among their key observations:

• Although new policies designed to favour distributed solar PV over utility-scale have yet to bear fruit, China managed to maintain its global pole position as the largest market with 10.5 to 12 GW depending on last quarter performance, after 2013 figures were revised downwards to 9.5 GW;
• Japan continued to install PV at an accelerated speed, with above 9 GW installed;
• Momentum continues in the US market that saw around 6 GW of demand in 2014;
• European markets declined for the third year in a row to around 7 GW, with UK and Germany leading the pace, followed by France;
• Six emerging markets (South Africa, India, Thailand, Chile, Mexico and Turkey) contributed together to around 3 GW in 2014.

The PV Market Alliance is comprised of several industry leaders. These include  Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory Co. Ltd. (AECEA), of Hong Kong, China; Becquerel Institute, Brussels, of Belgium; Creara (formerly Eclareon Spain), of Madrid, Spain; and RTS Corporation, Tokyo, of Japan

Market data on the U.S. is provided by SPV Market Research, of San José , California.

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PV Market Alliance