Solar PV shipments rise 65 per cent, while imports soar
Silicon shortages may be slowing down the growth of solar PV sales in the United States, but this doesn’t make the growth that has happened any less spectacular. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 2004 shipments were up 65 per cent, while there was a five-fold increase in imports of modules and cells. Of interest is that the proportion of shipments of thin-film technology jumped from 6 per cent in 2002 to 12 per cent in 2004 — and growing.
It will be interesting to see 2005 figures to get a true sense of how the silicon shortages have affected supply.
(UPDATE: Click here to get some figures on the Chinese solar market, which includes associated figures on silicon production.)
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca