World Will Have 1 Trillion Watts of Installed Solar By 2023

'Tis the season for our established check-in on where solar PV installations are going. It seems that prices are still going down and capacity is going up the world over, a continuation of the data found in our previous metric checks. However, there has been a more full lane being forged in the wake of the solar revolution.  

What's Coming For Solar?

Within the next five years, the world will likely become over 1 terawatt of solar capacity installed, according to the latest global data from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. That's a trillion watts of power being sent around the world, enough to serve more than one-third of America's electricity use.

Our latest primary capacity projection was one year ago when the GTM Research team projected 871 gigawatts by 2022. The latest projections show higher-than-expected growth for every year after 2018. For instance, WoodMac projections for 2020 are 26 gigawatts higher than last year's forecast.

The World Solar Market

It's Asia and everyone else going crazy over solar. China, Japan and India will make up 20 percent of the total global exchange through 2023. Over the next two years, China and Japan will make up half of the annual installations, even with both markets in slump this year.

The long-game of markets is very important. North America and Europe will account for 28 percent of the market by 2023; the Middle East will jump from 3 percent of capacity now to 9 percent, and Latin America will secure up 7 percent of global installations. The global market is increasingly various.

The cause for the upward adjustment in capacity is pretty simple. Prices are competitive and dropping. More countries are settling in place auction systems, increasingly "subsidy-free," and large-scale solar PV is gaining a lot of bids. Price drops haven't kept pace with recent price drops, but WoodMac expects costs to catch up.

WoodMac investigators simulated 625 auction-tariff scenarios and discovered a median price of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2022.

"Bid prices will resume their downward march pretty much everywhere. More sub-2-cent PV bids are likely, both in leading low-cost markets and in emerging markets that are launching solicitations. By 2022, awarded prices as low as $14/MWh will be old news," they communicate in the report.

As we can see in this article, solar is sweeping the world in a wave of clean energy production.  You can join that production, and save a ton of money by contacting HahaSmart and getting your solar panels scheduled for an installation today.  

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