This post was written for The Ground Floor by Rick Abelson, ULI Council Member, and director at Online Land Planning in Redondo Beach, California.
The world’s largest solar PV conference was held September 21-25, 2009 in Hamburg, Germany. Online Land Planning had a chance to attend and used the event as an opportunity to understand the key players, learn about new technology, latest trends and assess the current state of the industry. Here are a few impressions of what I heard and saw:
1. The solar PV industry appears quite mature and poised to launch in dramatic fashion once global capital markets rebound and cash becomes available. Japan, Germany and the U.S. remain the technology leaders. But now, there is overcapacity. So the goal is to maintain margins as prices get cut based on competition.
2. Solar PV manufacturers are being cautious about expansion and instead are focused on building market share. They are strategically looking for new opportunities in the 50-100 MW range.
3. To offset this concern and meet the pressing demand, a special ‘solar economic zone’ where a public – private partnership offers a business park setting, shared resources, tax and trade credits, green jobs, training and no government interference throughout the entire value chain - was proposed by India.
4. Governments trying to lure solar PV business into their regions have plenty to choose from as new competition enters the industry. As a result, third-party industry experts are now being asked to make independent evaluations on business plans to determine which companies will get government incentives.
5. Grid parity is still considered a nearly a decade away. But when it occurs, the solar PV industry is considered boundless in terms of financial potential, thus the continued investments to reach this milestone.
6. Solar PV farms, consisting of different applications including condensers, modules and reflective mirrors are the most ubiquitous large-scale applications. In populated areas and small countries, they take up a large amount of land, require constant maintenance and have poor visual quality.
7. Solar PV makes the most sense to alleviate 'brown outs' in many parts of the world where the demand for electricity is highest during the day and correlates to when the sun is shining.
8. Solar PV manufacturers are beginning to include vertical integration into their business models such as developing utility size power plants to capitalize on their output as they predict the future of the energy market and how power will be distributed.
9. The biggest technology drawback to solar PV is that the power produced must be used right away. It cannot be stored efficiently and affordably.
10. Uncertainty of the market has made leading solar PV companies unwilling to share lessons learned and competitive data with the industry.
