BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Between 2006 and 2010, total global capacity of many renewable energy technologies – including solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power, concentrated solar power (CSP), solar water heating systems, and biofuels – grew at rates ranging from around 15% to nearly 50% annually. Solar PV, the dominant form of renewable distributed energy generation, increased the fastest of all renewable technologies during this period. In 2010, the solar PV market grew at a rate of 72%, illustrating the acceleration of solar PV deployment worldwide. One of the primary drivers for this growth has been financial incentives, typically government-funded ones. According to a recent report from Pike Research, as such incentives are reduced in some major markets, other factors – in particular price reductions, new residential financing mechanisms, and third party ownership models – will become the key drivers for the solar PV market for the foreseeable future.

“The market is led by residential and commercial grid-connected PV systems and is concentrated in regions with favorable financial incentives, such as premium feed-in tariffs for PV, including Germany, Italy, France, Czech Republic, Japan, Canada, and the United States, led by California.”

The distributed solar energy generation market will increase from approximately $66 billion in 2010 to more than $154 billion annually by 2015, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%, the cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts. During that period, the firm anticipates that total installed capacity of distributed PV will rise from 9.5 gigawatts (GW) to more than 15 GW. Continue reading →