In the recent years, we have seen 60% annual compound growth rate in production capacity (not the same as the market value but still way too much).

2011 is predicted to grow only 15% in capacity but the industry should pick up speed again when inventories are cleared and some of the cost-lowering developments make it into production.

If prices went down to half of the current prices, we would see extreme demand again (since PV systems would become way too good investments). In this case, the yearly installed capacity would grow at least 1000% (10x) or more since PV would absolutely enter mainstream. This would result in a 5x market value.

I don’t think that this Samsung prediction is even close to a realistic future. Their own production will grow 20x (150MW –> 3000MW) and you can believe that others will grow production in the next 8-9 years by at least as much. It is like they are trying to paint a bleak future to avoid competition entering this industry.

Moreover, a lot of players are building new production capacity, like First Solar, in the middle of the recession. Probably because they know that they have further cost reduction ahead so they are pretty sure that they will be able to sell their panels.

Prices should be much less than today, installed watts should rise a lot more than the 2.3x increase in (normalized?) dollars.

I’ll be extremely surprised if we’re only installing 2x-3x per year in 2020 than now.

Predictions are that US installations will grow at 32% per year over the next decade. That’s a doubling of installed watts every 2.25 years. We should be installing 16x as much as we are now by 2020. And we’re renewable energy sluggards….