ScienceRocks
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Solar panel manufacturers are gearing up for strong growth with record first half of year
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lolDuring the first half of 2017, solar panel manufacturers announced near record amounts of new or upgraded production capacity. This new capacity, while almost 70% in China, is spread worldwide and focuses on the newest hardware trends in the industry pushing solar panel efficiency higher.
For comparison’s sake as the global numbers here are *very* large. The USA installed 14.6GW of solar power in its record-breaking 2016. The world installed 74GW last year. 2017 estimates are of 100GW installed (48GW+ in China). The world’s largest solar plants are around 1-2GW these days. And – an above average sized residential installation is 0.00001GW (10kW).
In the first and second quarter of 2017 – greater than 52GW of solar manufacturing hardware announcements were made. The volume represents to biggest mass of announcements in any first half of the year for the solar industry. The single largest two quarters in a row – at 57GW – were fourth quarter 2015 headed into the first quarter of 2016. It is expected that the second quarter numbers will be revised upward as more news is collected. The first quarter numbers were initially released around 17GW, and later revised upward to greater than 24GW. A relatively small, compared to the 40% of Q1, upward revisement of ~14% would make this largest first half, also the largest consecutive quarters we’ve ever had.