Solar growth shines strong
For the latest snapshot on the health of the solar sector, check out this report from Merrill Lynch. It estimates that solar-cell production growth was 35 to 40 per cent in 2006, and maintains the market will have a compounded annual growth rate of 35 per cent through to 2010. The solar PV market in California grew 55 per cent year-over-year in March, with SunPower capturing a lion’s share of that growth. In fact, SunPower saw year-over-year growth of 208 per cent, and this is certainly to benefit Canadian power electronics partner Xantrex. The report points out some of the recent solar news around the world, including the beginning of construction on a 40-megawatt solar park in Saxony, Germany (The size of 200 soccer fields!). There’s no mention of the Ontario market here, but given there are a number of 10-megawatt projects in this province ready to move forward it will be interesting to see year-over-year growth in Ontario a year from now.
On that note, at least one planned project in Ontario is being spearheaded by a new solar PV startup out of California that’s currently operating in stealth mode. I’ll provide more details on that when they become available, but believe me — I’m digging.
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