Solar PV could reach 10 per cent of global capacity by the end of the decade, says global investment bank UBS, as production costs continue to fall and major economies continue to lay a path for further deployment.
In a new report, UBS analysts say solar’s dramatic growth is assured because it is no longer dependent on a single, subsidised market, as it once was with Germany.
The biggest markets for solar PV are now found in the three biggest economies – China, the USA & Japan – and markets in emerging economies are also important, and in some cases sustainable with no subsidies.
“The most fundamental point is that solar growth is now coming from different regions in the world,” the UBS analysts write. “As such its future is more assured than when all of the growth was driven by feed-in tariffs in Europe in general and Germany in particular.”
UBS believes annual installations will grow to around 100GW by 2019 and will become critical in many markets because it can provide technology at the same cost, whether used for a solar torch or a large utility scale installation.
One of the key drivers will be at the point of consumption, the distributed market, where solar can arbitrage the grid system by avoiding the grid cost, which represents about 50% of the cost of buying electricity from the grid in country’s such as Australia.
© 2014 Solar Choice Pty Ltd
