Sunny outlook for solar power players
Peter Marsh, London /April 05, 2007
Source: The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21506195-36375,00.html
HIGHER demand for solar energy, triggered by concerns about global warming, will drive a fourfold increase in the annual revenues of the global solar equipment industry, from $US20 billion last year to $US90 billion in 2010, according to new projections. Profit growth is expected to accelerate even faster, as costs are contained, pushing margins up to nearly 60 per cent.
The interest manifested by many electricity customers in solar cells as a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is also likely to spur a 10-fold surge by 2015 in production of high-purity silicon required for the cells, according to the report by Photon Consulting, a German research group.
Demand for the silicon needed for solar cells is likely to rise from 41,000 tonnes last year to 120,000 tonnes in 2010, and 400,000 tonnes in 2015, the report says.
The price of this silicon, due to scarcity, has rocketed to as much as $US300,000 a tonne. Michael Rogol, Photon’s managing director, said falling costs made the solar power industry increasingly competitive. “We are seeing incremental changes in innovation which are pushing down costs and helping the sector’s expansion,” Mr Rogol said.
Jeremy Leggett, chief executive of Solar Century, a leading British producer of solar panels, said the report’s upbeat tone was “credible”. The solar sector was likely to be “one of the revolutionary businesses of the 21st century”.
Solar installations are expected to provide 15GW of electricity in 2010, against 2.7GW last year – only a tiny fraction of total world electricity generation capacity. But Photon reckons by 2015 solar electricity could account for 7.6 per cent of power consumption in homes in the world’s 30 rich countries.