From PV Magazine
BloombergNEF has released its updated solar market outlook for 2023, projecting that 413 GW of module capacity will be installed this year. This capacity will mostly be driven by China’s contribution of 240 GW, along with strong growth in many other global regions.
The quarterly update was provided via Bloomberg’s podcast “Switched On” in the episode, “Solar supply glut crushes margins but buildout booming.”
From BNEF (listen to the podcast, it's fascinating):
It’s a good news, bad news situation for solar right now. On the one hand, annual installations are continuing to break records, with China set to build almost as much solar this year as the entire world rolled out in 2022. But on the other hand, the industry is suffering from a supply glut, weighing on the prices and margins of module makers.
The reason why the forecast doesn't show a continuation of the exponential growth in new installations since 2010 is the difficulty of integrating lots of solar into the grid: electricity prices get driven down to zero on sunny days, but zoom as night approaches. The solution is twofold: first, require solar farms to have 4 hours of storage; and second, to encourage wind and also CSP (concentrated solar power), which has 12 hours of storage. That still leaves rooftop solar, and in this case, it would make sense for governments to subsidise not the solar panels but to encourage attached behind-the-meter storage.
It's worth pointing out that China's new solar this year is almost as much as the whole world's installations last year.
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