In a recent report entitled Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Market Update 2024, Power Technology’s parent company, GlobalData, revealed that the global solar PV market is on track to exceed 7TW of installed capacity by 2035.
The market grew from a cumulative installed capacity of 227.4GW in 2015 to 1.48TW in 2023 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9%, with an addition of 371.7GW in 2023 alone.
By 2035, cumulative installed capacity is expected to reach 7.51TW at a CAGR of 16.2% from 2023 to 2035.
The Asia-Pacific region emerged as the largest market for solar PV in 2023, boasting a cumulative installed capacity of 893.67GW.
Although a distant second and third place, Europe and North America also revealed substantial capacities, with 304.85GW and 189.27GW, respectively.
In 2023, Asia-Pacific installed 253.98GW of solar PV, more than double the amount – 117.68GW – installed by all the other regions combined.
The success of the Asia-Pacific region can be largely attributed to China’s continued dominance in solar PV. China set itself apart by adding 216.5GW in the past year, while runner-up the US followed with only a 24.1GW addition.
China also topped the cumulative capacity charts, with 609.5GW installed as of 2023. The US was the second-largest market with 172.5GW, followed by Japan, India and Germany with cumulative capacities of 91.6GW, 84.8GW and 81.7 GW, respectively.
The report added that auctions have proven to lead to the most capacity additions. Many countries are transitioning from the feed-in tariff (FiT) mechanism to auctions to ensure solar capacity additions without subsidies. This approach allocates capacity to generating companies through a competitive process, allowing the market to establish tariffs instead of relying on benchmark costs to set FiTs.
Global renewable energy capacity experienced an unprecedented 50% surge in 2023, marking the fastest growth in two decades, according to the International Energy Agency. Solar power played a pivotal role in this growth, accounting for three-quarters of the new global renewable capacity installed that year.
