United Kingdom Becomes World’s Fastest-Growing Solar Market

United Kingdom Becomes World’s Fastest-Growing Solar Market

The sun is rising on the United Kingdom’s solar market in 2010, as attractive government incentives make it the world’s fastest-growing country for Photovoltaic (PV) installations this year, according to iSuppli Corp.

Installations of PV systems in the United Kingdom will amount to 96 Megawatts (MW) in 2010, up an astounding 1,500 percent from 6 MW in 2009. While the country’s growth will start from a nearly negligible level in 2009, the expansion will dramatically outpace the growth of the next fastest-growing nation—Spain—which will rise by approximately 730 percent in 2010.

The attached figure presents iSuppli’s forecast of annual PV installations in the United Kingdom.

“When you think of weather in the United Kingdom, London fog comes to mind more readily than bright sunshine,” said Dr. Henning Wicht, senior director and principal analyst for iSuppli. “However, things definitely are looking brighter for the solar market in the United Kingdom in 2010, as the country has adopted attractive Feed-in-Tariffs (FIT) to promote PV adoption. Furthermore, with leading solar country Germany cutting its FITs, the focus of the PV world is shifting to places with more favorable incentives—making the United Kingdom a solar hotspot this year.”

While growth in the United Kingdom is expected to slow down from such a blistering rate after 2010, PV installations will continue to rise in the 50 percent range for each year through 2014.

Giving the solar market FITs

FITs promote the use of solar energy by guaranteeing that utility companies will buy excess electricity produced by solar installations. This helps individuals or organizations to defray the upfront costs of investing in a PV system.

Extensive use of FITs has helped Germany to become the world’s leading country for PV, with 3.8 Gigawatts (GW) worth of installations in 2009. However, Germany government’s move to reduce FITs will cool off growth in the country from 2012 on.

Energy in the U.K.

The overall goal of the United Kingdom’s program is to encourage smaller, distributed, self-generation in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions and to contribute to the renewing of the U.K. energy park. The United Kingdom is using above-market FIT rates to incentivize PV adoption.

The average residential price for electricity in the United Kingdom is currently 0.12 pounds per kilowatt hour (kWh). A residential PV system of up to 4 Kilowatts (KW) in size can earn 0.36 pounds for every generated kWh that is consumed by the owner itself or 0.39 pounds for every kWh fed into the grid. This translates into a financial benefit of 0.48 pounds per kWh for self-consumption.

According to the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, a typical household that installs a well-positioned 2.5 Kilowatt (KW) system could save 140 pounds per year on its electricity bill. Installations conducted since July 2009 can retroactively qualify for the tariff. Returns on Investment (ROIs) for advantageous residential projects can approach 12 percent, iSuppli calculates.

iSuppli’s initial estimate is that the U.K. PV installation market will reach 214 MW in 2012 and 501 MW in 2014. This assumption is modeled after the ramp rates of other countries and by accounting for the United Kingdom’s level of insolation, or the amount of sunlight it receives.

To learn more about this topic, see iSuppli’s new report, entitled: PV Market Has a Solid Case for a Robust 2011. ■