IHS Markit forecasts this year will mark a decade of year-on-year consecutive growth for solar globally, driven by China’s thirst for PV.
The latest quarterly IHS Technology PV Demand Market Tracker indicates uncertainty over feed-in tariff cuts in China have played a significant role.
“The proposed Feed-in Tariff cuts announced in China since September have resulted in stronger than projected growth in the fourth quarter,” states Josefin Berg, a senior analyst at IHS Technology.
“Therefore, we forecast annual installed capacity to be 77GW in 2016, and 79 GW in 2017. This is a year-on-year growth rate of 34 percent in 2016, which follows the 32 percent year-on-year growth in 2015.”
Looking ahead, IHS sees growth of only 3 percent next year as a result of a decline in PV installations in the heavy-hitter markets of this year; China and the United States. IHS expects two years of single-digit growth globablly before a more robust market recovery in 2019.
2017 looks bright for India’s solar market, with projected 10 GW of installations. Should this be realised, it will make India the third largest solar PV market next year, leap-frogging Japan; which has chalked up 8.7 GW of newly installed capacity this year.
The IHS PV Demand Market Tracker provides forecasts and analysis for installed PV capacity in almost 50 countries.
In other recent research from IHS Markit, the company has found energy storage has gained increasing awareness this year. A survey run by IHS indicated 63 percent of the respondents (installers, integrators and distributors) were already purchasing energy storage products, up 20 percent points from 2015.
US installers and distributors ranked highest, which IHS says underlines the positive impact Tesla Powerwall has had on awareness within the industry.
“Of particular note, less than 12 percent of the respondents mentioned cost savings in their motivation, highlighting how emotional drivers were overtaking economic considerations,” says Principal Analyst, Marianne Boust.
However, the most cited reason for purchasing storage was to increase PV self-consumption and reduce mains grid electricity usage (26.4%) – so perhaps that could also be considered an economic consideration depending on the installation scenario.
