PV Solar Energy Trends for 2021

The pandemic has shown that the energy market continues to see continuous growth due to the increase in professionals working from home, either due to new workplace SOPs, or due to government-mandated restrictions and lockdowns. This is a great opportunity for PV panel manufacturers as since 2019, module prices for PV production has reduced significantly since 2010 - by a whopping 70%.

Increased Demand for Solar Panels

As people spend more time indoors, and see their power usage bills increase at the same time, many more households are looking to install solar panels to reduce their energy spending whilst also lowering their carbon footprint. Green energy and environmentally sustainable alternatives continue to be an important part in the shift of consumer culture in this part of the 21st century. Additionally, many developed countries provide a subsidy, excess energy buyback program, tax rebate or even cash grant (or a combination of all these incentives) for households to install PV Solar panels.

This growth and opportunity not only drives demand for PV Solar Panel manufacturers, but also creates jobs in the form of contractors tasked with surveying, installating and maintaining an ever-increasing market of households using PV Solar panels. This serves to further increase the market's size, growth and creates job and economic opportunities.

The Perovskite Breakthrough

According to Bloomberg Green, the latest breakthrough in PV Solar technology is the Perovskite cell, which is thinner and more transparent compared with traditional polysilicon. Perovskite can be implemented as a thin layer on top of existing PV Solar cells to boost production, or be integrated into building glass which will become energy production units by themselves. The Korea Electric Power Corp is the team leading this latest material revolution, and they hope that Perovskite can help to even further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near future.

Asia Pacific to lead growth

When you account for the fact that over 50% of installed PV modules originates from the Asia-Pacific region, you can see where global marketing efforts should be turning to. According to GlobalNewsWire, China continues to to be the world's fastest-growing PV solar producer and also adopter of solar energy. In 2019, China's solar energy output reach 205 GW, representing an 18% increase from 2018. Japan ranks as second in the world, right behind China - and their solar energy output supplied a total of 5% of the nation's electricity.

Focus on Solar Storage

Whilst PV Solar panels and farms continue to see a rise in both funding and popularity across the world, solar storage has been identified as a field that should not be neglected. As solar energy can only be harvested during the day, effective solar storage solutions are necessary to supply power during low or zero energy production periods. In 2019, the U.S House of Representatives approved an investment tax credit in a clean energy package bill to help move forward the adoption of better solar storage for facilities.