Solar prices going up along with interest rates means customers should act now and lock in solar savings. If your business is hurting from high energy prices – please contact AVOLTA Energy to find out how we can save you money with a financed turnkey solar solution. We are already helping companies like InBev, EPA, Ad Astra and Britt and many more. Let us help you too.
The passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the US this month was a huge win for the climate, but it is also clearly very supportive for solar panel prices. The IRA stimulates both demand and supply for solar (and other clean energy sources) through economic incentives to deploy solar and batteries, as well as economic incentives to build out the US own PV panel supply chain.
The problem for Central America and every other emerging market is that this is going to drive a surge in demand starting January 1 2023 when the law takes effect, and likely sooner as companies gear up and stock up. It is going to take several years to meaningfully boost US PV production. So there will be a huge extra bid for solar panels coming on top of already surging demand from Europe as it tries to keep the lights on without Russian gas. US utility scale solar deployment is forecast to almost 4x from 10 GW in 2020 to 37 GW per year in 2023 and 2024. That is a lot of new demand for panels.
European Demand Is Already Surging After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Russia started cutting gas flows to Europe after the EU imposed sanctions on Russia and the policy response from the EU has been to greatly accelerate the renewables buildout in Europe.
2022 has already seen a jump in EU solar deployment from 32GW in 2021 to 39 GW this year. And the REPowerEU plan clearly aims to accelerate this rate of growth next year and beyond with over 320 GW of new deployments planned by 2025, a more than doubling of existing capacity.
And Now Chinese Power Outages Are Hurting PV Supply
China is getting hit with an extraordinary and unprecedented heatwave across the country, coupled with a drought that is leaving rivers running dry and has left the mighty Yangtze at the lowest level seen since record keeping began in 1865. This combination is causing power outages in regions reliant on hydropower and causing factory shutdowns through August and they are expected to continue into September.
The Yangtze River Is Running Dry In Many Sections – Threatening water and energy supplies for millions of people.
The Sichuan region is home to the world’s PV supply chain. And over 80% of the regions power supply comes from Hydro. Factory shutdowns and resulting loss of supply have pushed polysilicon prices to record highs and there is no sign of this breaking anytime soon.Power outages are expected to continue into September, leaving the supply and demand balance very supportive of prices through the end of the this year, and then the market will start seeing the impact of the US’ IRA on the US pull for panels.
The market got very used to seeing falling PV prices over the last decade, but the damage done by Covid to supply chains and now the surging demand coming out of the US, the EU and also China – which has announced plans to install over 50GW in the second half of this year, in line with the whole year’s installs in 2021 – means supply chains are going to stay stretched and prices will stay supported.
The good news for the solar industry is that energy prices are going through the roof, so even though solar prices are up it is still offering huge savings versus the alternative.
If your company is hurting from high energy prices, get in touch and let us show you how much you can save with our financed turn-key solar solutions. Join our impressive list of clients: EPA, Martec, ICU Medical, Britt, InBev and many more.