PV Market Alliance announces the 2016 PV market at 75 GW and a stable market in 2017

After 50 GW of PV installations in 2015, the global PV market reached 75 GW in 2016, a 50% YoY growth, with now a total capacity installed globally crossing the 300 GW mark.

• China, leading the PV market since 2013, installed in 2016 an absolute world record of 34 GW, representing an increase of 126% YoY and 45% of total global deployment. Given China’s total installed capacity of 77 GW, PVMA estimates that China will have exceeded the 100 GW mark by the end of 2017, if not even earlier.
• Japan has installed about 8.6 GW of PV in 2016, down 10.8 GW in 2015. 2017 might show a further decrease but the market is expected to reach 7.5 to 8.5 GW, due to current project pipelines.
• The US market experienced major growth with installations possibly reaching 13 GW, however PVMA anticipates significant uncertainties for the coming years.
• Europe installed around 6.5 GW, driven primarily by the UK market, Germany, Turkey and France. A relatively low deployment has pushed Europe’s global PV market share to below 10%.
• India experienced significant growth with 5 GW installed in 2016, up from 2 GW in 2015 and is expected to add up to 8 to 9 GW in 2017.
• As anticipated, several emerging markets on all continents started to contribute significantly to the global growth with at least 7 GW installed. Other American and Asian countries contributed significantly while the Middle-East and Africa start to deliver.

2017 could become a challenging year with at least 65 GW installed in a pessimistic scenario (a market drop of 13%). Reasonably, a similar level of installations as in 2016 could be reached if established markets maintain a reasonable level of development. A declining or stable market is likely to cause that module prices will continue to remain under pressure with new production capacities coming online, thus increasing further the gap between supply and demand.

These numbers are DC numbers and refer to grid connected PV systems, not installations and not shipments of PV components which can deliver slightly different results.

Source:pvmarketalliance