The solar panel market is expected to see significant growth in 2014, according to a recent report from Bloomberg. In particular, the market leaders are expected to see greatly boosted shipments — the expectation being about 52% more panels shipped than on 2013.
Altogether, the market will see an increase less than the percentage increase seen by the market leaders, but still notable — up from 40.3 GW in 2013 to (a predicted) 52 GW in 2014. Bloomberg’s predictions match closely with other projections from market research firms, so we imagine it will be close to accurate.
Image Credit: Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0 license)
The largest markets for installation will (unsurprisingly) be the American, Chinese, and Japanese ones — at a predicted 5.6 GW, 14 GW, and 11.9 GW, respectively.
Sustainnovate provides more:
Solar power is growing fast in all of these markets as well as others. Each has its own benefits, but the underlying theme is that the falling cost of solar panels makes them more and more competitive. Nonetheless, incentives are still critical to much of the growth in leading nations.
China provides incentives for solar power installations of all sizes. Japan similarly offers a range of feed-in tariffs for solar power projects. However, Japan’s incentives are especially good for the rooftop solar market, while China is installing a lot more utility-scale solar power. In the US, tax credits and rebates are driving much of the growth, but other incentives in particular states help too. Furthermore, the simple policy of net metering and solar’s competitiveness against retail electricity is important to the growth.
As far as the coming years, 2015 is likely to see even higher numbers — owing to the fact that solar panel prices are still continuing to fall, at the same time as the bottom line of the manufacturers is returning to the black. All signs seem to be pointing up.
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