Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

The vital importance of the regulation framework to trigger the development of a PV market has been recognized these last few years in many European countries. For policymakers today, one of the key challenges is making the best choice to initiate and stimulate PV markets. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, EPIA has launched the PV Observatory initiative. This paper describes this new initiative, which aims at analyzing the current state of regulatory frameworks in a set of countries, starting with the main European PV markets.

As 2009 comes to a close, many equipment suppliers are reflecting on the fact that the photovoltaic industry, despite its huge growth potential, can be a brutal place to do business. In the first half of the year many equipment suppliers had the unnerving experience of falling off a cliff, going from record order levels to no orders at all in the space of a few months. This sobering moment served as a reminder that the PV industry needs both access to finance and government support to continue growing. Indeed, it should be remembered that photovoltaics would still only be an interesting technology serving niche markets were it not for government subsidies. The one good thing about this year has been the accelerated drop in cell and panel prices. This is bringing ever closer the day when the price of PV generated electricity reaches parity with electricity generated from non-renewable sources and subsidies are no longer required. It is also driving a new round of investment in more efficient manufacturing equipment.

Solar currently represents less than 0.5% of global electricity generation. However, as renewable electricity gains importance in the US$1 trillion global electricity market, we forecast solar photovoltaic shipments to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 50% for the next four years. We expect an increasing number of countries to promote solar energy as the cost gap between solar and fossil fuel-generated electricity closes. This paper provides an overview of what to expect from the PV market in 2010.

The global PV market is undergoing fundamental change. According to a new survey by EuPD Research, Germany is once again the most important PV sales market worldwide this year. Current market conditions are tightening, but within Germany there is still plenty of undiscovered potential. The transformation of the PV market from a supply-driven sellers' market to a demand-driven buyers' market is, however, an accelerated process rather than a slow development.

This article will look at what trends can be gleaned from patent application publication figures of the past decade in the sector of PV technology. The study looks at the number of patent applications in PV technology published worldwide between 1999 and 2008. The data will show in which regions and countries patent protection is being sought. The figures are taken from patent documentation databases developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and Japan Patent Office or databases used worldwide and available at the EPO, and they are retrieved mostly using patent classification schemes. The article also provides a brief overview of the role of the EPO and what companies, researchers and individual inventors should keep in mind when applying for a European patent.