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The amount of grid-connected PV installation officially surpassed 100GW in Europe in 2Q16. Demand will mainly come from distributed generation in the future and the UK, France, and Germany will have the most demand.
According to IHS’s statistics, Europe’s grid-connected installation has increased from 3GW in 2005 to over 100GW in 2Q16 due to policies stimulated by Renewable Energy Directive and subsidies provided by the governments. During this period of time, PV costs dropped 80%, which contributed most to the installation growth.
Yet, Europe may face obstacles when reaching another 100GW.
Demand and utility-scale installation have increased rapidly for leading European PV countries, such as Italy and Germany, stimulated by feed-in-tariff (FiT) proposed earlier. As different countries continuously lower FiT or conduct subsidy cut, the demand growth has slowed down.
EnergyTrend estimated that the newly added installation will be about 7GW every year in Europe as a whole, and 3.5GW of which will come from the UK, France, and Germany, while another 3.5GW comes from other European countries. Despite slower utility-scale installation growth in Europe, the market share of distributed generation will keep increasing due to lower PV costs and high customer acceptance.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
