Dummie Document

Ground-mounted utility scale solar power systems

continue to clearly dominate the solar space – and this
won’t change much for the next five years. In 2017, the
large-scale ground-mounted segment increased its
shares along with the top markets expanding their
global footprints. The growth of the major solar
markets is primarily based on ground-mounted PV
power, even though there are efforts to foster the
rooftop segment as well. With electric vehicles and
smart cities making stronger inroads after 2020, there
is a lot of upside potential.
China not only strongly expanded its output to 52.8 GW
in 2017 from 34.5 GW in 2016, but also its global market
share to 53% from 45%. Its total installed capacity even
increased to over 130 GW of which around 100.6 GW are
utility scale plants. The other around 29.7 GW are what
China calls distributed solar systems (now < 30 MW, earlier
<50 MW), which are actually also mostly ground mounted
systems, but installed closer to demand centres. The rate
of distributed systems strongly increased over the last
year, and we will see in the short run also a stronger run
for rooftop systems after the Chinese government
recently halted the utility-scale fIT programme.
However, deploying large volumes of utility-scale solar is
much easier to establish than a distributed PV rooftop
market, which requires a substantial period of time and
a lot of effort to educate consumers, while setting up an
effective platform with the right financing mechanisms
and technical standards. That’s why emerging markets
usually begin their solar chapter with tenders for utilityscale
solar and frequently struggle to set up the
distributed rooftop segment, even if politicians generally
prefer PV on roofs which they consider the natural place
for the technology as it avoids any potential conflicts on
land use. A good example for such a development is
India. Its National Solar Mission officially targets 100 GW
of solar by 2022, with 40 GW coming from rooftop solar.
But of the 19 GW installed by end of 2017, only 1 to 2 GW
are ground-mounted PV power plants.
Even in developed solar markets in Europe, the recent
trend to tenders is triggering a new wave of groundmounted
PV power plants that will be installed in Spain,
for example. The low cost of solar enabling the beginning
of a merchant PPA based market will also push the
ground-mount segment. On the other hand, consumers
will evolve increasingly into prosumers, solar panels will
turn into building materials, and smart cities will want to
employ the advantages of distributed small-scale solar in
combination with storage and digital solutions. In
addition, more cities, states or even countries might
follow the example of California to make it mandatory
having solar as part of newly built homes – though all this
is likely to happen after 2020.