Pv 2009-2012: The Anatomy Of A Shakeout

摘要

The PV industry has had a good time of it over the last decade. Fuelled by aggressive policies and generous subsidies in Germany, Japan, the U.S. (especially California) and Spain, worldwide demand for photovoltaics has grown at a remarkable pace over the last decade: global installations have grown at an annualized rate of 51 percent from 2008 to 2008 (see Figure 1). At the same time, module prices have fallen at an average annual rate of only 2 percent over this time, reversing a decades-long trend of declining prices and increasing from 2004 to 2007 by as much as 30 percent. As costs continued to decline strongly over this time, the resulting top-line industry revenue growth in excess of 35 percent annually attracted both private and public capital aimed at expanding manufacturing capacity and capturing more and more of this expanding profit pool.