In China, solar panel commissioning exceeded the January-July 2023 figure by 28% in the first seven months of 2024 and in India, by 77%. In the US, the first half-year increase was 55%.
The sector development is driven, among other things, by international trade in solar power equipment. According to Ember forecast, this year almost 20% of global capacity additions (115 out of 593 GW) will be enabled by equipment imports from the leading solar panel producing countries. The latter include China which has dominant positions throughout the value-added chain: S&P Global Platts estimates that in 2023, seven of the world’s top ten polysilicon manufacturers were based in China; ten out of top ten silicon wafer and cell suppliers and nine out of top ten solar model suppliers were Chinese.
An important item in the equipment market is tracking devices that adjust solar panel tilt during daytime for higher power generation efficiency. Based on S&P Global Platts data, the United States leads the world in the use of solar trackers: the number of new trackers installed in the US last year is sufficient to accommodate 36.5 GW of solar panels. However there are also new, fast-growing markets such as Uzbekistan where trackers for 2.3 GW of solar panels were commissioned last year. In 2023, the number of operational solar trackers in Saudi Arabia increased 4.4-fold and in India, 10.6-fold.
Accelerated solar panel commissioning is also associated with the widespread application of energy storage systems which help mitigate power supply risks during cloudy weather periods. According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), the United States commissioned 5 GW of energy storage capacity in the first seven months of 2024, bringing its installed capacity to 20.7 GW – a giant step from the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, when annual storage capacity additions in the US were below 10 MW.
