50 GW Of Global PV Inverter Shipments Forecast For 2015
GTM Research has released some key findings pertaining to the PV inverter industry, chiefly that global shipments could reach 50.6 GW in 2015. If this amount is reached, it will be about a 30% increase over the previous year. Chile, Mexico, Central America, and South Africa will probably see sharp increases due to the development of utilities there. Demand is shifting from Europe to North America and the APAC region as well.
“Europe is going through the bottom of the market, but the United States is continuing to expand in the market. We expect, despite the inverter prices have tumbled, but the next two years, market value is still rising sharply,” said GTM analyst Scott Moskowitz.
The global market for inverters will increase to about $7.1 billion. Though the total number of gigawatts of inverters shipped is expected to rise, falling prices means the market does not grow as much.
The market has dropped off the last two years, but it is expected to grow in 2015 and 2016. Another trend has been more competition. Six years ago, 82% of global shipments came from the top 10 inverter vendors, but four years later, that number dropped to 58%.
A separate inverter report found that global PV inverter revenue for 2015 and 2016 will be about $13.2 billion.
It says that Japan will likely remain the largest PV inverter market until 2018. The US market was the only one to surpass $1 billion a year for the last three years.
The FIT in Japan will undergo reductions, so the inverter market is expected to contract somewhat. Also, the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) in the US might not be extended, so the solar market would most likely fall off to a degree if that should occur.
It will be most interesting to see how the potential reduction in government support will impact the fledgling solar industry. The very fact that inverters are newsworthy at least suggests that it is of some robustness, and built to stay that way.
Some of the top inverter manufacturers are Sungrow Power Supply, ABB, Advanced Energy, Tabuchi, and Omron.
Image Credit: Stan Sheb, via Wiki Commons
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
