Intersolar: How Long Will the Boom Last?

Stephen Lacey
July 15, 2010 | 3 Comments

Last year at Intersolar North America, the mood was pretty gloomy. This year, as I talk with a range of analysts and executives, the mood is far more upbeat. With global PV growth projected to be 98% this year, what's not to be happy about?

The U.S. could see about 800 MW to 1 GW of PV installed in 2010. World-wide, we could see anywhere from 12 GW to 14 GW of capacity put in the ground.

Of course, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Plenty of companies are finding it difficult to attract investment for technology development and project construction. And the uncertainty around policy in European countries and in the U.S. could have a negative impact on the industry in 2011. But all in all, it's amazing to see the differences between the atmosphere at the conference this year and the conference in 2009.

Here's one of the handful of analysts we spoke with, Stefan de Haan of iSuppli, about the boom in the PV industry. The skies have cleared, but there are certainly plenty more clouds on the horizon.

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3 Comments

Robert Tilden
July 20, 2010

U.S. Techs are looking good - One company can take us to Electric Vehicles seemlessly (no disruption or inconvenience) and even at LOWER COST with ZINC - Air Batteries. And tax payers can put all their tax liability to work for them in their program, more info. here: tnns.org/solar

Stephen Lacey
July 19, 2010

Thanks, Arno. You bring up an interesting point. Many people have questioned Germany's push to develop solar, given how poor the resources are.

However, it takes a leader to build an industry. The Germans had the vision and leadership to move forward on solar and create an incredible base for this industry to grow from. Without Germany, we would be in a much different place.

It's interesting -- sometimes it takes an initial inefficient build-out of an industry to get it moving. (The crazy build-out of information pipelines when the internet scaled up being a good example).

Arno A. Evers
July 16, 2010

Stephen, thank you very much for this again excellent interview. Analyst Stefan was also good. Still nothing is a hard to precict as the future, specially when it is farther away than half a year or even years. The potential of solar power is in fact unlimited globally, hower I still have my doubts to use and/or support photovoltaic in Germany. And that is just because of the laws of physics. The incident solar radiation is just much too small in our country. I feel sorry for all the silicon used in the PV panels, which are installed in Germany. They should have been used much better in more sunny countries. And the German feed-in-tariff is not at all supporting progresss in the technology. It is hindering the progress. The main winners are the German utilities. They earn the most profit on the feed-in-tariffs. The future big hardware business, even in Germany, is made by Chinese PV suppliers, anyway.

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Stephen Lacey

I am a reporter with ClimateProgress.org, a blog published by the Center for American Progress. I am former editor and producer for RenewableEnergyWorld.com, where I contributed stories and hosted the Inside Renewable Energy Podcast. Keep...