Market Watch

Solar support policy | The UK’s solar industry has grid parity within reach, but recent proposals to cull various subsidy schemes threaten to pull the rug from beneath its feet. Liam Stoker asks whether the UK can embrace alternative forms of support to help solar achieve long-term freedom from subsidy.

State energy policy | Acceptance of solar in the boardrooms and living rooms of America along with President Obama’s Clean Power Plan potentially put the US on the precipice of huge solar growth, but the patchwork of state solar policies remains a barrier. John Parnell and Tom Kenning look at some of the US’ leading solar states and ask what others could learn.

The global PV capacity reached 177GW at the end of 2014, and by 2020 the PV Market Alliance forecasts that 630GW of PV could be installed. The entire value chain of the PV industry needs accurate data and a clear vision of how markets could develop in the future in order to avoid repeating past mistakes, and especially the damaging price war that led to a dramatic industry consolidation. The question of PV market evolution will be acute in 2015 and 2017, which will represent the next two important milestones for PV development: for the first time in years, the PV industry could approach its production capacity limits.

With a volatile energy market and a fast-expanding solar sector, there are plenty of topics for the industry to stay on top of. Intersolar Europe will explore a number of issues aimed at helping the industry find new business opportunities and understand key market trends. PV Tech Power looks at three of these in more detail

As the upstream PV industry enters a new phase of growth, manufacturers are seeking new strategies and technologies to enable them to continue to cut costs and remain competitive. The sixth edition of the annual International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic describes the key trends likely to shape the PV sector in the coming year. This paper analyses some of the most promising areas for development.

Conference report | In April, the deployment of solar in West Africa came under the spotlight during a two-day event in Accra, Ghana. Reporting on the event, Ben Willis heard huge excitement over the prospects for solar in the region tempered by the realities of scaling up a new technology in a challenging part of the world.

Emerging markets | Mexico remains a market of undoubted potential, but there’s a growing opinion that it will struggle to live up to its hype amid regulatory uncertainty. Liam Stoker asks if last year’s sweeping energy reforms will continue to hold the market back, or result in a solar explosion by 2018.

Competitive bidding | Now into its fourth round, South Africa’s national renewable energy programme has successfully driven down the price of solar energy. But there are growing concerns that this has been at the expense of fostering a diverse local market, writes Tom Jackson.

Business | A growing number of tier-one PV module manufacturers have been changing business models in recent years from once being dedicated module suppliers to becoming project developers. Mark Osborne analyses the progress made by major PV manufacturers in their downstream ambitions in 2014 and expectations in 2015.

Sophia, a four-year European Commission-funded project to promote coordination across the EU's PV research community came to an end in January. With 20 partners drawn from industry and academia, the project appears to have fulfilled its aims of fostering greater collaboration. But with Europe's PV manufacturing industry facing a dire predicament in the face of competition from Asia, is it too little, too late?