Solar business from Korea

As 2009 draws to an end, a new annual survey undertaken by Photon Magazine, based on a sample of 119 grid operators, as well as information from inverter manufacturers, puts the PV installations in Germany at between 3GW and 4GW for the year. The figure is much higher than Germany’s Federal Environment Ministry estimates as well as those from major system integrator Phoenix Solar , however inline with Photon Consulting’s most recent forecast of 3.85GW. Total installed PV power could reach the 10GW mark in Germany by the end of the year and could reach 2% of Germany’s electricity production in 2011. However, on a more controversial point Photon believes that the German feed-in tariff should actually be lowered more than is currently planned as production costs have fallen dramatically. This will result in the cost of solar being artificially higher than it needs to be and therefore potentially damage future adoption. “The high growth statistics are proof of the extent to which PV is un...

A bullish projection from Solarbuzz points to the PV market growing 5% in 2009, reaching 6.37GW, which has been spurred by the significant increase in expected installations in Germany. The market research firm expects German installations to top 3.2GW in 2009, noting that the third quarter demand reached 980MW and is projected to rise to 1680MW in fourth quarter, resulting in an increase of 71.4%. "The continuation of uninterrupted PV market growth year on year hides huge changes in the distribution of country market demand in Europe. Policy adjustment in Spain removed 42% of the global PV market in the fourth quarter of 2008 and it took until the middle of 2009 for the powerful engine of the German market to replace that lost contribution, and to now exceed it," said Craig Stevens, President of Solarbuzz LLC. "This had the effect of massively realigning economics through the PV chain during the past year, while also setting enormous commercial challenges for companies ...