Global Concentrated Photovoltaic Cumulative Installations to Achieve More than 1 Gigawatt Capacity by 2020

Monday 24 March 2014, Amsterdam

The global Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) market is expected to undergo a major growth spurt in the next five years, with its cumulative installed capacity forecast to jump from 357.9 Megawatts (MW) in 2014 to 1,043.96 MW by 2020.

According to the new report, China and the US dominated the global CPV market in 2013, with their cumulative installed capacity reaching shares of 35.4% and 33.3%, respectively. Spain stood third after the US with 12.2%, followed by Portugal and Italy, with respected shares of 5.1% and 4.3%.

Swati Singh, the Analyst covering Alternative Energy, says: “The CPV market is at a nascent stage, especially with the technology evolving and achieving new heights of efficiency improvement. Companies that have been successful in operating CPV prototype systems in pilot sites are now progressing towards multi-MW CPV projects.”

Two CPV power plants came online in 2012 and 2013. These were Amonix’s 30-MW Alamosa in Colorado, US, and Suncore’s 50-MW CPV power plant in Golmud, China, which is the largest CPV plant in the world. However, despite these developments, market growth forecast is conservative, according to the new report. From 2009, many companies in the CPV industry, both small and large, either had to close down their businesses due to bankruptcy, or were acquired by other companies.  

“A further concern in the CPV industry is the reliability and performance of the systems, although significant efforts have been made to develop International Electrotechnical Commission standards for CPV-system certification,” Singh concludes.