Market Watch

With a volatile energy market and a fast-expanding solar sector, there are plenty of topics for the industry to stay on top of. Intersolar Europe will explore a number of issues aimed at helping the industry find new business opportunities and understand key market trends. PV Tech Power looks at three of these in more detail

As the upstream PV industry enters a new phase of growth, manufacturers are seeking new strategies and technologies to enable them to continue to cut costs and remain competitive. The sixth edition of the annual International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic describes the key trends likely to shape the PV sector in the coming year. This paper analyses some of the most promising areas for development.

Conference report | In April, the deployment of solar in West Africa came under the spotlight during a two-day event in Accra, Ghana. Reporting on the event, Ben Willis heard huge excitement over the prospects for solar in the region tempered by the realities of scaling up a new technology in a challenging part of the world.

Emerging markets | Mexico remains a market of undoubted potential, but there’s a growing opinion that it will struggle to live up to its hype amid regulatory uncertainty. Liam Stoker asks if last year’s sweeping energy reforms will continue to hold the market back, or result in a solar explosion by 2018.

Competitive bidding | Now into its fourth round, South Africa’s national renewable energy programme has successfully driven down the price of solar energy. But there are growing concerns that this has been at the expense of fostering a diverse local market, writes Tom Jackson.

Business | A growing number of tier-one PV module manufacturers have been changing business models in recent years from once being dedicated module suppliers to becoming project developers. Mark Osborne analyses the progress made by major PV manufacturers in their downstream ambitions in 2014 and expectations in 2015.

Sophia, a four-year European Commission-funded project to promote coordination across the EU's PV research community came to an end in January. With 20 partners drawn from industry and academia, the project appears to have fulfilled its aims of fostering greater collaboration. But with Europe's PV manufacturing industry facing a dire predicament in the face of competition from Asia, is it too little, too late?

In 2014, a number of countries around the world began to develop into serious solar end markets. Ben Willis asks IHS analyst Josefin Berg to give her tips on the emerging markets to watch over the coming year.

At a conference in Thailand at the end of 2014, delegates heard of the region’s attempts to break free of costly diesel power. Lucy Woods reports on the progress solar energy is making in displacing the diesel generators.

Throughout 2014, there were widespread reports of China’s struggles to hit ambitious PV targets, particularly with distributed projects. Beijing-based solar expert, Frank Haugwitz, reveals the difficulties Chinese developers experienced.