TaiyangNews webinar on Solar Market 2024 Review & 2025 Outlook had representation from leading stakeholders in the global PV industry
Global solar PV market grew exponentially in 2024 despite overcapacity concerns as some newer markets came up on the horizon like Pakistan, while the growing ones like Europe slowed down
Further growth is envisioned for the PV industry in 2025, albeit the rate will slow down over the next few years
The year 2024 for the global solar PV industry can be best described as both tumultuous as overcapacity concerns pulled down prices, thus squeezing manufacturers’ profit margins, as well as thrilling since solar assumed a more dominant role in the global power mix, reaching 2 TW scale by the end of it.
Starting with 2025, prices have started to go up for some components, albeit slowly, but overcapacity is not going away just as yet. At the beginning of this year, on January 22, 2025, TaiyangNews brought together leading solar industry stakeholders at the Solar Market 2024 Review & 2025 Outlook Webinar to take a look back at the year gone by, and to look into the crystal ball to see the future of the global PV market this year.
Lead Solar Analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BloombergNEF) Jenny Chase launched her presentation announcing 599 GW DC of new PV installations in 2024 while adding that more and more countries are now coming out with their annual installation figures. Of this, 335 GW DC was installed in China, although the officially released number of 277 GW was in AC (see China Exited 2024 With Over 277 GW New Installed Solar PV Capacity).
For 2025, Chase forecasts moderate annual growth of around 12% with 670 GW DC in new installations, which could also go up to 700 GW DC. However, she warned that this growth is not guaranteed as a lot of inventory continues to remain out there, and some markets are actually slowing down.
Overall, Chase believes the trend is pretty clear that the global PV market in dollar terms is in a ‘slump.’ Europe, with its power prices coming down from the time when the continent wanted to shake off its reliance on Russian fuel, is seeing a softening of demand. There isn’t enough incentive to buy solar in Europe so the BloombergNEF forecast is for major markets here to stagnate or shrink.
While solar has started to displace fossil fuels in some markets as its share in the electricity supply is set to exceed 15% in many countries, Chase warned that this is likely to lead to increased curtailment, especially from grid-connected utility-scale solar power plants and low realized power prices. This may end up impacting new project builds, since developers need to ascertain how and where to sell the power generated.
Additionally, there continues to be a lot of supply in the market up and down the value chain. The supply curve for solar-grade polysilicon in 2025 shows huge polysilicon capacity, mostly in China. The current price of polysilicon in China hovers around $5.0/kg, which may force manufacturers to lower production.
“If all the polysilicon capacity was actually going to run at a high utilization rate, there’s enough to make about 1.6 TW of modules this year,” she stressed. There is plenty of supply for wafers, cells and modules as well, majorly in China, but even ex-China, there is already 280 GW of annual module manufacturing capacity. Utilization rates are generally low these days, but new capacities are still coming online – mostly abroad to cater to local content requirements.
Newer production locations are sprouting in particular in India, which saw demand jump to impressive levels above 30 GW DC (see Utility-Scale Solar Powers India's Record 24.5 GW PV Installations in 2024). Other hotspots are Turkey and Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, which is a tariff-free Asia-based gateway to the US market. The Middle East and North Africa region is also on the scene. Yet, on the whole, Chase sees 2025 as another difficult year for solar manufacturers, very likely leading to consolidation in the industry.
Representing the solar PV manufacturing domain was Henning Schulze, President of European Region at JA Solar. Sharing S&P Global’s forecast in his slide deck, Schulze said 2024 global solar installations totaled around 545 GW DC, going up to a total of 599 GW DC in an optimistic scenario. JA Solar shipped 70 GW of modules in 2024.
In 2025, the global solar PV installations are likely to settle around 586 GW DC but may go up to 673 GW DC under an optimistic scenario according to S&P. From 2026 through 2030, the annual deployments will exceed 600 GW DC.
Schulze believes that module prices have started showing signs of a slight recovery since the beginning of the year, but how the market grows from here remains to be seen, as the PV industry is full of surprises.
JA’s main route as of now remains the current industry workhorse TOPCon, which it expects to continue as the dominant technology for the next few years. Based on this trend, JA has launched a new series of upgraded DeepBlue 5.0 modules with up to 670 W output and 24.8% module efficiency.
Schulze added that the manufacturer continues to experiment with other cell technologies like heterojunction (HJT), XBC, and tandem too. Regarding modules, the trend in the industry is customized solar panels for various applications as extreme weather conditions become regular events.
He also reflected on trade barriers implemented in more and more countries around the world that are making production supply chain diversity an important consideration, factoring in the module installation locations. JA, he shared, had 100 GW of module and 80 GW each of wafer and cell production capacity at the end of December 2024. This includes 2 GW module capacity in America, 3 GW module and 6 GW cell capacity in Oman, and 5 GW module, 5 GW cell and 7 GW wafer capacity plans for Vietnam.
The event also had participation from the world’s solar PV industry association, the Global Solar Council (GSC), with CEO Sonia Dunlop sharing the views of the 97% of the world’s PV market that it represents.
One major goal that the GSC is working towards is tripling the global renewable energy capacity by 2030, which it announced along with the Global Renewables Alliance in 2023 during COP. In 2024, the world achieved 2 TW of total installed solar PV capacity (see Global Solar PV Installations Achieve 2 TW Milestone).
Getting to the 2030 target has its own share of challenges, both financial as well as political and geopolitical. The high cost of financing for PV and storage projects is one particular challenge, she said, especially for developing and emerging markets. The GSC has launched an International Solar Finance Group that brings together various stakeholders including the World Bank and the private investors to find a solution at the global level.
Other challenges Dunlop listed include health and safety (H&S) incidents in utility-scale projects for the 7 million solar jobs at present; cannibalization, curtailment and negative prices. To counter these, the GSC has launched a grid task force, shared best practices, while pushing for electrification.
For solar trade barriers, it is pushing for dialogue; for recycling, agri-PV and lowering carbon footprint, the GSC is looking at setting global standards. To address traceability and ESG related challenges for the PV sector, the council mentions the Solar Stewardship Initiative in which it is involved.
The overall objective of the GSC, explained Dunlop, is to promote sustainable PV deployment at the global level to achieve the 8 TW target by 2030 by addressing various challenges.
Panel discussion
Moderated by the Executive Director of TaiyangNews Michael Schmela, the panel discussion with all the 3 presenters revolved around the learnings from the last year, and how the market will progress from here on.
Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF saw a successful year for solar in 2024 as a lot more capacity was deployed and newer markets came up including the highflyer Pakistan, while Henning Schulze of JA Solar reflected on the intense competition that will make solar a more structured market in the future as some companies are forced to exit. Patent fights also brought attention to technology.
From a policy perspective, Sonia Dunlop of the Global Solar Council sees the challenges getting more complex with regard to market design, regulatory concerns, flexibility, reform of electricity markets, batteries, and storage, among others.
Video recordings of the presentations and the panel discussion are available on the TaiyangNews YouTube channel. These can be accessed here.
Meanwhile, block your dates for the next TaiyangNews event Solar Technology India on April 10 and 11, 2025. Details will follow soon.