Sharp reductions in market prices combined with the impact of regional and national policies pushed the North American photovoltaic (PV) market to a new quarterly peak with 0.93 GW installed in Q4’11, according to the latest "North American PV Markets Quarterly" report issued by NPD Solarbuzz (San Francisco, California, U.S.). The solar incentive policy mix in both the United States and Canadian markets due to Solarbuzz drove up demand in large-scale ground-mount systems, which was 59% of this total. Regionally, the New Jersey, California, Arizona, and Ontario accounted for two-thirds of Q4’11 demand. Read more...

2011 is being looked back on in the global solar industry for many negative qualities. Primarily, a collapse in profitability in solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing led to companies restructuring, layoffs, plant closures, and even a number of bankruptcies. Late in the year a vicious trade dispute sharply divided the U.S. PV industry, which also saw significant negative press, most notably the fabricated scandal of the Solyndra DOE loan guarantee. However, all of this obscures the fact that global PV, concentrating solar power (CSP) and concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) industries continued to grow in 2011, at some times and in serveral regions dramatically. Read more...

Solar Server: First off, let's deal with the elephant in the room. What are your thoughts on the developing trade case that SolarWorld has petitioned for? What are your expectations for how the Chinese PV industry and government will respond, and what you think this will mean for the PV industry? Chris Brown: First off, I think it is a lot more complicated. I think that treating this as a trade dispute purely between China and the U.S. is not only bad for the industry as a whole, but also not accurate in the sense that you have installers in the U.S. who are against the suit and who are going to suffer from it. Read more...

It’s almost one year since the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) and rumours are beginning to fly around the UK solar industry as to what the upcoming Comprehensive Consultation on the feed-in tariff (FiT) holds. I decided it was time to investigate what people are actually saying, and to find out how much of what is being said matches the facts around budgets, pricing and deployment. Read more...