World Solar PV Installations to Grow to ~600 Gigawatts This Year – CleanTechnica

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Solar power is constantly breaking new records. More solar power is being installed than energy other electricity source in the United States and several other markets, and the world as a whole. We thought solar power was seeing tremendous growth for several years, but last year it went through the roof, and this year — it’s going to go far above the roof.

A new forecast from BloombergNEF (BNEF) has total solar PV power installations reaching nearly 600 gigawatts (GW) this year — 592 GW is their target. That’s a 33% increase over the 2023 total!

The biggest portion of that solar power growth is supposed to come from China, and there’s no one even close to its level. Europe comes in second, but it’s a small fraction of the China total.

The only negative here is that the very low prices for solar modules are putting a lot of pressure on solar module companies. “Polysilicon prices have fallen to $4.7/kg. That is below production cost for nearly all manufacturers,” BNEF writes. “Firms are shutting down factories for maintenance, and we have reduced our estimate of 2024 polysilicon production to 1.96 million metric tons – still enough to make 900GW of modules.”

Going on: “Module prices have dipped to $0.096 per Watt, the lowest level ever, while polysilicon at $4.7 per kilogram is below production cost. Most solar manufacturers are expected to report losses this year, their convertible bonds are showing signs of weakness, and some will not survive this cycle.”

“The module price decrease has been discussed earlier this year by the chairman of two of China’s largest PV manufacturers, Trina Solar and JinkoSolar,” pv-tech notes. “Last May, they highlighted that module price was nearing its bottom, while future demand should enable the industry to turn a corner.”

The forecast in this report, the 3Q 2024 Global PV Market Outlook, is up slightly from the previous quarterly report. BNEF notes that developments in India and Pakistan led to the raised forecast, while slower than expected installations in Japan and South Africa countered that trend. The net effect was a 1% increase in the 2024 full-year forecast.

Here are a few more key stats:

• 1.2 terawatts of annual solar module manufacturing capacity worldwide.
• 0.9 terawatts — how much solar module capacity can actually be built with the world’s expected supply of polysilicon in 2024.
• 0.6 terawatts — estimated solar PV capacity installation total this year.

At the beginning of 2024, BNEF forecasted that somewhere between 520 GW and 655 GW would be the solar PV installation total for 2024. So, 592 GW is right in between those low and high estimates, and thus matches what BNEF was expected.

If you want more details on BNEF’s numbers, analysis, and forecast for the solar PV industry, the full report is available to BNEF clients right here. For the rest of us, this is a good overview of the global solar PV market, and I think we can all be quite happy with the growth of the solar PV market and the massive scale of solar PV that is expected to be produced and installed in 2024.