10000 MW Capacity Addition in Solar PV Coming This Year.
Global capacity addition in the year 2010 is expected to touch 10,000 MW this October. This is unthinkable and unbelievable even from the statistics of recent past. In the year 2000, world installed 170 MW of Solar PV. And 2010′s expected jump to 10000 MW is simply incredible. Today even 170 MW is the installed capacity of single medium sized utility. Solar PV majors like Suntech boasts of 1 GW of installed capacity today. Solar PV market has grown at an healthy rate of 50% during this decade to reach to this level.Major bottleneck in the accetance and adoptability was high prices of Solar PV cells and Modules. Today module prices have dropped to $2 per Watt from the levels of $10 per Watt of 1990s. We may be witnessing the levels of $1 per Watt in not so distant future. Today lower cost is driving the adoption of Solar PV globally. 10000 MW of annual capacity addition is nothing when it is compared with 38,000 MW of Wind Powered capacity addition which happened in the year 2009. Total Solar PV installed capacity in the world today stands at 20 GW against Wind powered capacity of 200 GW. Definitely Solar PV has lot to catch up and future is looking bright with emerging nations like India joining in.
Shayle Kann's PV demand analysis
The end of 2010 would see global module manufacturing annual capacity reaching 16000 MW. Thus capacity is no longer throttling the growth in Solar PV market. There are slew of expansion programs and activities going on which would make the growth projections of more than 50 percent sustainable.
Henceforth the Solar PV demand will not be driven by a specific country alone, as happened in 2008 (Spain) and 2009 (Germany). Rather the growth is expected to be all pervasive and well spread around.
May also like to read: 1800 MW of solar PV projects, China shows the way.
