Solar Market Declines for First Time Ever
Global demand for solar cells and panels is likely to drop 17 percent in 2009, says Navigant Consulting. Market recovery won’t come quickly.
Worldwide demand for solar energy equipment is set to drop about 17 percent in 2009, the first time the market has ever experienced a drop in demand, an analyst said Thursday.
Solar cell and panel makers are likely to sell about 4.6 gigawatts this year, compared with about 5.5 gigawatts in 2008, said Paula Mints, principal analyst at Navigant Consulting, at the Solar Energy Investment and Finance Summit in San Francisco.
Germany has been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal global market this year. With a still lucrative feed-in tariff that guarantees high solar electricity pricing, the country will account for about 56 percent of the demand in 2009, Mints said.
"We've vastly oversold in Germany, and they are not too happy about that," Mints said, adding that it's not healthy to have one country accounting for more than half of the global demand.
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