ANALYSIS - Half-year figures point to possible 100-GW utility-solar by year-end

Utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) capacity reached almost 75 GW at the end of June 2016, with growth continuing to be led by China, the US, India and the UK.

The recently published half-year figures show utility-scale solar PV capacity continuing to rise strongly towards 75 GW globally. Another record year is expected, and a cumulative total of 100 GW is still on the cards.

The top ten countries remain as they were at the end of 2015, but changes are likely before year-end. Together, they account for 87% of global capacity, while the top three – coincidentally also top 3 in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics medals table (though not in the same order) – represent 64%.

Ranking of top 20 countries by capacity

India continues to grow strongly and has a huge backlog of tenders awarded. It is just a matter of time before it overtakes the UK, which is slowing with few new projects coming forward since the closure of incentive programmes for large-scale solar.

Chile is rising steadily up the table and, with almost 2 GW under construction and a further 12 GW approved, should join the top 10 soon. Brazil could be joining next year, if it now diverts its energies from the Olympics to building its pipeline of tender-winning projects.

What will it take to get to 100 GW?

Timely completion of the known project pipelines in the US, India, Chile, the UK and Pakistan, together with the continuing growth trend in China, should be just enough to get there. This assumes that the half-year figure will also creep up, as in the past, when further details are published of recently completed projects.

It’s a big ‘ask’ to complete 37 GW of new capacity in a single year, however, so we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that not too many project timetable slip.

Progress at the regional level

The regional spread of capacity continues to be very uneven. Most of the capacity in the leading markets is concentrated in just a few provinces.

There are now 15 states or provinces with over 1 GW of capacity, led by California with 7.2 GW. All of the next four, and eight of the 15, are provinces of China, led by Gansu with 4.2 GW. The remaining states are North Carolina (2.5 GW); Ontario, Nevada and Brandenburg (all about 1.5 GW); Arizona (1.2 GW) and Rajasthan (just over 1 GW).

Other recent utility-scale PV news

We end as usual with our regular look at interesting and new developments in the last month or so:

A 300 MW section of the Quaid-e-Azam solar park is reported to have been commissioned, making it the largest operating plant in Pakistan.

Ukraine is considering a solar farm of up to 1 GW to be built on the contaminated land around the former nuclear power station at Chernobyl. Neighbouring Belarus has already installed a solar plant on land affected by the disaster – just over the border at Brahin.

Iran has announced another proposed new solar farm; and this one at Jajarm in North Khorasan may be the first to start construction.

Source of data

All the details in these posts are based on the Wiki-Solar Database of some 5,700 utility-scale PV solar projects around the world. Unless otherwise stated, capacities are expressed in terms of the AC output of the plant, and ‘utility-scale’ is defined as projects of 4-MW AC and over.

About the author:

Philip Wolfe MBE has been in renewables since the 1970’s when he was founder Chief Executive of BP Solar. He led companies in the PV sector until the early 2000’s. Since then he has undertaken more broadly-based roles in renewable and community energy. His book on utility-scale solar was published in 2012.

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