L R AS Published on Friday 18 January 2019 - n° 260 - Categories:forecasts;
Global 2019 installations of 113 GW (+8% over 2018) ?
According to EnergyTrend, global PV panel installations increased by 5% in 2018 to 103.3 GWp compared to 2017 (98.5 GW). They will reach 111.3 GWp in 2019 (+8%). This increase is due to the decrease in
panel prices and the spread of global facilities in emerging countries.
In the second half of 2019, the top five panel manufacturers will dominate 70% of total capacity, led by LONGi and Zhonghuan who will dominate the global supply of monosilicon wafers.
Production capacity for bi-facial solar cells will increase to 40 GWp in 2019. Mono-PERC bi-facial cells will increase further.
The energy conversion rate of monosilicon-PERC cells will reach 22% in the first half of 2019 and 23% by the end of the year via new technologies, which will put pressure on the development of PERT N-type cells (fully diffused passivated rear emitter). 
Digitimes of 17 January
Editor's note While the most recent global forecast indicated a decline between 2017 and 2018, EnergyTrend estimates that 2018 installations are higher than 2017. Why is this? Why? With whom? There is no indication of what motivated such an upward revision.
As usual, the forecasts for the coming year are extremely cautious. The forecasting institutes seem to be well equipped to make a realistic forecast. There is then a revision, usually upwards, without the institutes recognising that they have been wrong previously. After a more or less long period of silence, this leads to a revision whose origin is not known, as outlined above.
The EnergyTrend forecast includes a stability of gigawatt installations in China between 2018 and 2019 (at 42 GW). It is likely that the new Chinese policy, announced last week, has not been taken into account.
The only certainty we can have is that photovoltaic is constantly developing, that the phases of retreat or acceleration are extremely limited and are followed by particularly powerful rebounds or retreats, as happened in the United States in 2016 with a return to the previous trend the following year.
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