Research and Markets Announced Addition of The Solar PV Report Ed 1 2011

Research and Markets (http: //www. researchandmarkets. com/research/8c7f72/solar_pv_report_ed) has announced the addition of the "Solar PV Report Ed 1 2011" report to their offering. The past year and a half was characterised by downstream acquisitions. Solar manufacturers acquired project developers and project pipelines. Most notable of which was First Solar's acquisition of NextLight, a major renewable energy developer with a pipeline of 1.1 GW of utility scale PV projects. Manufacturers are slowly moving their operations overseas to cheaper markets, but often keep an assembly facility in major markets because of their low labour costs. Big oil incumbents seem to be giving up on Solar with BP no longer manufacturing solar cells, except through joint ventures or by outsourcing contracts, and Shell having sold its assets in 2006. Wind developers have started to enter the sector, including Chinese developers China Huaneng, Datang New Energy, Huadian, Longyuan and Spain's Acciona Energy along with the Korean manufacturing giants, Samsung and Hyundai. Once again 2009 was the year for Chinese manufacturers, which produce cells at low cost, and crystalline silicon manufacturers, due to low silicon prices. As expected, Spain installed only the bare minimum of projects, 69 MW. Other European countries experienced record growth, but this may be short lived due to the expectation that the countries will reduce feed-in tariffs at the end of the year. Germany reduced tariffs at the start of the year and plans to reduce them again in July. Silicon shortages no longer affect the PV sector; instead inverter shortages are delaying grid-connected projects. Manufacturers of inverters reduced capacity in 2009 in response to the downturn and can't keep up with current demand from the electronics and PV industry. Reported delivery times for some inverter manufacturers were as high as 30 weeks in the first quarter of 2010. Source: www. businesswire. com