Asia-Pacific's top 5 markets to bring 60% of global PV demand in H2

Sep 17, 2014 - The five top Asia-Pacific markets -- China, Japan, India, Australia and Thailand -- are to account for nearly 60% of the global demand for solar photovoltaics (PVs) in the second half of 2014, a new report says.

According to NPD Solarbuzz’s latest quarterly report on the major PV markets in the Asia Pacific (APAC), demand from the listed countries is seen to reach 17.2 GW in the second half of the year. They account for about 95% of 2014 demand in the whole APAC region. Ray Lian, senior analyst at NPD Solarbuzz, said in a press release on Wednesday that the particular PV markets will all be among the top 10 worldwide.

In China, some 80% of PV demand is expected to derive from ground-mounted projects now, but this trend is changing. NPD Solarbuzz noted that China’s National Energy Administration just recently unveiled new policies to back the development of distributed generation PV projects, especially such installed on rooftops.

Japan, the other solar leader in the region, has a pipeline of cleared PV schemes totalling 59 GW. Still, actual second-half demand from the island country is projected to be 5 GW or a bit more because developers are facing issues such as limited availability of qualified land resource, funding and grid connectivity. “While the Japanese government reviews the progress of the approved project pipeline, PV installations will continue to accelerate quickly, during the next few quarters,” said analyst Holly Hu.

The other three leading APAC countries are facing greater challenges, with annual demand from both Australia and Thailand seen to fall, partially due to upcoming renewable-energy policy amendments and uncertainty among investors. In India, policy uncertainties are the main reason why the solar sector's expansion was delayed a bit, but still, the government avoided greater problems by deciding not to impose anti-dumping duties on imports of PV equipment from the US, China, Taiwan and Malaysia, Hu added.

The Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan are some of the other APAC countries that have initiated the addition of solar capacity, NPD Solarbuzz concludes.

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