American and Asian EPCs stay on top as solar projects get bigger

US, Chinese and Indian companies continue to dominate the league table of top EPC contractors published today. Wiki-Solar founder Philip Wolfe attributes this partly to the size of projects being installed in their home markets. “China, India and the US now have plants at the gigawatt scale”, he says, referring to massive developments especially in Gujarat, Texas, Rajasthan, and Qinghai. WikiSolar analysis shows the average plant size in India is over 80-MW. In the USA the mean size of plants now being installed is 90-MW – up from just 15-MW a decade ago.

The big climbers in the contractors list [see overleaf] have all benefitted from these larger projects, coupled with the high growth in their primary markets reported recently. SOLV retain the top spot, with compatriot McCarthy Building and France’s Eiffage climbing to second and third. Larsen & Toubro rise many places to fourth, while other high climbers are Tata, also from India, China Power Construction and China Machinery Engineering.

The average plant size in Europe is much smaller at under 20-MW. European contractors, led by Eiffage, Belectric, Equans, juwi and Cox Abengoa therefore have to complete more projects to keep up. “Against this background” says Wolfe “it is impressive to see so many European companies in the list, with specialists like Goldbeck, Elmya and Grupotec also keeping pace with the multinationals”.

Together the 34 EPC contractors in this table have installed cumulatively over 100 MWac of utilityscale solar capacity, of which 30% has been commissioned since the start of 2023.

Readers are reminded that Wiki-Solar measures capacity in MWac delivered to the grid, including only projects over 4MWac. The installed capacities would be roughly 25% higher if measured by the DC solar array output in MWp.

Most, but not all, of the leading O&M contractors – which Wiki-Solar lists separately – are companies in this top constructors table.

Top EPC contractors for utility-scale (4-MWac+) solar projects at Q3-2024. The full list can be seen in Wiki-Solar's announcement.

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