Report: PV installations in Southeast Asia to reach 5GW by 2016

PV installations in Southeast Asia are expected to grow at 50% annually over the next five years, bringing cumulative installations close to 5GW by 2016, according to the latest report from market researcher IHS.

By 2015, IHS is projecting that annual installations could reach 1GW across Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.

Jessica Jin, PV market analyst at IMS Research, part of IHS, said: “Although the market is currently dominated by Thailand, a number of countries within the Southeast Asia region have huge potential for PV and offer significant opportunities to suppliers, and these will account for a growing share of the market in the future. Given its substantial and quickly growing need for electricity, the small amount of the population that currently has access to electricity, and its reliance on diesel generators on its thousands of islands, PV is a highly attractive solution for providing distributed electricity sources in Indonesia.”

Growth in Thailand has primarily been large-scale ground mounted system but the growth is set to continue with a new incentive scheme that promotes residential roof-top systems that is expected to be introduced in 2013. The market research firm expects the market share of utility-scale systems in Thailand to fall by 25% by 2016 as a result.

Currently the market in Southeast Asia is dominated by major Chinese and Japanese module manufacturers, while the largest system integrators were headquartered locally.

-Solar Media, owner of the PV Tech website has recently announced details of a new international conference on the fast-growing 'tiger cub' Southeast Asian solar markets. It takes place in Bangkok, Thailand on March 19-20 next year. Details can be found at www.solarbusinessexpo.com.