The major chains of photo voltaic panels in the United Kingdom received the news about the changes in RO rates starting in the April of 2013 with great interest, as they may lead to a very possible increase in their revenues, also the suppliers of balance-of-sytems (BoS) components in the market are bursting with joy for the Q1' 2013 possible windfall.
Solarbuzz , an important renewable market analyst, drew a report calld UK PV Market Entry Guide:New Revenue Opportunities, according to the newly published document, a very important pipeline of hundreds, even thousands of megawatts of large scale, ground mounted renewable technology infrastructure was developed in 2012. And the expected reduction to the RO rate will determine the developers to continue the investments in the solar energy/renewable sector, thus leading to a significant surge in demand for the cheapest materials off-the-shelf.
The president of Solarbuzz, Mr. Finlay Colville presented the situation in the following terms:
“Explosive PV growth in 2011 and 2012 was dominated by residential installations benefitted by attractive feed-in-tariffs. However, the focus at the start of 2013 will change rapidly to megawatt-scale ground-mount installations as installers seek to beat the end-of-March cut off deadline.”
And the market analyst Solarbuzz predicted that the large scale push will determine the United Kingdom solar panel market to go over 1.6 gigawatts in 2013. Keep in mind that the UK's photo voltaic market grew by over 94% in terms of capacity installed in just 2 years, the last two actually.
The impressive growth was fueled by the United Kingdom's solar policies, mainly the solar support mechanism called FiT&RO, it was so efficient that the UK entered the top 10 most reliable global photo voltaic markets in both 2011 and 2012.
Due to the fact that the UK market, according to Solarbuzz analysts, has a lower financial risk than other PV markets, it is expected for many major PV manufacturers and suppliers to plan long term strategies for the United Kingdom renewable sector.
Solarbuzz also said about the capacity of the UK's market potential to even outperform the already very optimistic predictions for 2013, as Mr. Coleville said :
“Energy costs remain a highly emotive issue within the UK. Consumers continue to prioritise investments to hedge against inevitable rising electricity prices. So long as PV system pricing continues to decline, there is a strong possibility that the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Impact Assessment goal of 22 GW by 2020 can be reached.”
Mr. Coleville also told us that the United Kingdom's photo voltaic market is no longer an emerging market, we can talk about an established one,and the companies playing in the renewable field will have to adjust their strategies in order to cope with the leading downstream installers and the developing projects the future will bring.
To quote Mr. Coleville:
“By the middle of 2012, there were more than 4,000 certified PV installers in the UK,” “This made it very difficult for overseas PV suppliers to decide which companies to forge long-term supply relationships with. The growth of the ground-mount segment will assist in filtering down the list of downstream survivors, with many of these companies participating in the Q1’13 demand pull over the next few months.”
You must realise that the NPD Solarbuzz UK PV Market Entry Guide: New Revenue Opportunities report is based on an exhaustive data base in which over 100 of the leading companies are listed and ranked across a range of categories.
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