Trends in Photovoltaic Applications: policies, drivers, statistics, and industry analysis
Online seminar, to participate Click here
Speaker : Caroline PLAZA, from Becquerel Institute
EVOLUTION OF ANNUAL PV INSTALLATIONS
Over 945,7 GW of PV power plants were producing electricity worldwide at the end of 2021, of which around 70% have been installed during the last five years. Over the years, an increasing number of markets have started contributing to global PV installations, and 2021 closed with a record number of new countries installing significant numbers of PV.
Market drivers
The upward trend in module prices observed at the global level at the end of 2021, related to stress on several raw materials markets, has not affected the competitiveness and development of the market. The rapid decline in PV prices over the past years, despite the conjectural recent price increase, has enabled PV systems to achieve competitive prices in several countries. The possibility of developing photovoltaic systems with limited or no financial incentives is now an observable reality.
Long-term private contracts (PPA) and the sale of electricity on wholesale markets have been observed in an increasing number of countries in 2021. This growing competitiveness has also boosted the share of PV installations operating under self-consumption without any financial support mechanism. If electricity prices should remain at the high level experienced in 2022 in several places around the world in 2022, especially in Europe, the question of competitiveness would change completely: without any support scheme limitations, the potential of the PV market seems virtually unlimited.
Keywords: The annual PV market reached 175 GW worldwide in 2021. While the world was facing the second year of a pandemic and despite the end-of-year disruptions in Asia, the photovoltaic market continued growing. This is an exceptional result: 945,7 GW of PV power plants were producing electricity worldwide at the end of the year, of which around 70% have been installed during the last five years. This exceptional result has been analysed in the recently released IEA PVPS, "Trends in Photovoltaic Applications 2022 report".
The publication is available here.