Technology investments into advanced PV cell manufacturing have been at record levels in the past few years, with high-efficiency concepts seeing investment levels not seen since the days of turn-key thin-film lines a decade ago.
Finlay Colville, head of market research at Solar Media, details precisely how the UK’s post-subsidy solar pipeline has soared to just shy of 3GW, while simultaneously forecasting something of a revival for UK solar in 2019 with 500MW to be developed.
During the past few years, we have had numerous requests at PV-Tech from a wide range of PV industry stakeholders (due mainly to the success of the PV CellTech and PV ModuleTech series of conferences) to launch an India-specific PV event in Delhi. The requests have come from Indian companies, overseas investors, government bodies, trade associations, and both upstream/downstream industry activists seeking to understand and drive future developments.
Finlay Colville summarises the updated analysis by our in-house research team at PV-Tech, where we have adjusted our models and forecasts for the 20 companies active in Taiwan today producing ingots, wafers, cells and modules.
With the multi to mono transition largely a fait accompli in the PV industry, the buzzword for 2019 will certainly be on bifaciality. This has been brewing for some years, but the sheer weight of capacity and production will finally impact on large-scale utility solar in ways most appear to be grossly unprepared for.
For all intents and purposes, 2018 may be remembered as the year that Taiwanese solar manufacturing moved from its former cell-making glory days of the past (Taiwan solar 1.0) to adjust to the new reality as defined by China’s bulldozing annihilation of cash-struck overseas manufacturing regions in recent times.
Much has been written and voiced over the past couple of months in the PV industry, following the so-called China-531 policy announcement that finally provided a wake-up call to Chinese manufacturers that their domestic end-market was not going to be allowed to maintain its near-exponential growth characteristics.
Ahead of PV ModuleTech conference, Finlay Colville takes an in-depth look at the type of module companies that will be internationally known over the next 12-18 months.
