EnergyTrend, a division of Taiwanese market reseach company TrendForce, forecasts solar module demand to reach approximately 125.5 GW this year. If realised this would represent 16% year-on-year (YoY) global market expansion. The analysts believe that this level of growth is likely to continue through 2020.
With the number of gigawatt-scale markets set to increase YoY from last year’s 16 countries to 21 in 2019, module demand is expected to become more geographically diversified, the Taiwanese analysts added. This diversification is a prime reason that the global market expanded in 2019. “Markets are popping up all over the world,” EnergyTrend said.
“Clients will slightly reduce pull-ins for Q3, but this is expected to be a temporary state of rest for the market,” the analysts explained. According to preliminary figures, Chinese manufacturers shipped around 28.5 GW of modules to foreign markets from January to May 2019, thus almost doubling the results of the same period of 2018, in which shipments to overseas markets reached 14.6 GW.
More growth coming from Europe
European PV module demand is expected to almost from 11.9 GW in 2018 to a whopping 21.8 GW in this year. “The removal of European Minimum Import Price (MIP)trade barriers opened up a new export channel for Chinese suppliers impacted by China’s 531 New Policy,” TrendForce noted. The analysts also attribute this year’s projected European increasing demand to the Paris Agreement. As a result of these two factors combined, PV demand is expected to grow by a further 10% to 24 GW in 2020.
South America, the Middle East, and Africa, along with other unspecified emerging regions, are looking to have at least 2-3 countries with GW-scale markets this year.
In early report, released in January, Trendforce said that the effects of the 5/31 policy shift in China were less severe than expected, and that global installed PV capacity for 2019 would reach around 111 GW. In these figures, the EU was highlighted as one of the fast growing markets for 2019, projecting a year-over-year growth rate of more than 50%. China and the United States will remain the first and second largest markets this year, followed by India and Japan.
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It’s too low! The transition to low catbon energy is slow!!