Page 14 - North American Clean Energy November December 2015

solar energy

Overcoming the Challenges to

Solar Market Growth

by Kate Trono

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2017 AND BEYOND, three main challenges threaten to derail the growth growing the market without federal incentives, prices need to drop. Current project pricing
of the solar industry:
is already dropping by at least ive percent quarter over quarter, but the solar industry is
not doing enough, or doing it fast enough.

Market size - Projections for utility scale projects in 2016 are estimated to be nearly
8 GW, a two-fold increase over the 2014 market. hat type of growth equates to a huge Long-term market penetration - Naysayers worry about the collective ability to operate
success for the industry. Unfortunately, the gains are not predicted to be sustained. an increasingly solar grid when so much uncertainty remains about variable energy supply.
According to SEIA and GTM, the 2017 the market is expected to dip to less than 2 GW, or When it comes to deploying solar on a universal scale, ensuring grid stability becomes an

half the 2014 market.
increasingly signiicant challenge.

Market pricing - Many solar project developers do not see an immediate post-ITC
To overcome these challenges and ensure the solar industry continues on an uninterrupted
solar future in the United States. Instead, they plan to turn to international markets or upward trajectory, every solar organization must think more creatively about solar energy

pursue wind or other renewable projects and wait to see when and if solar regains its cost solutions that reduce developer and EPC costs for installing a project, maximize long-term
competitiveness. his line of thinking poses another signiicant challenge; to continue
return on investment in owning a project, make solar energy more reliable, and ultimately
increase the price for which a project’s
energy can be sold.

Market expansion
he simplest way to grow the market size

is to reduce upfront project installation
costs, which would also solve one aspect
of the market pricing challenge. For solar
mounting manufacturers, for example, this

has long meant reducing steel. But with
an evolving and increasingly sophisticated
understanding of how things like the
frequency of the system afect long-term

structural integrity, reductions in metal
become more and more diicult to attain.
hat is not to say wind tunnel testing and
designing a solution for the speciic project

site is not still essential, but beyond what
industry leaders are already doing, there
simply is not much steel left to remove.
his reality has pushed product designs

to ofer more in the way of problem solving,
such as:
• Module agnosticism, to allow projects to
move forward and construction to begin

before the module has been selected.
• Foundation flexibility, which, for
ground-mount projects, means having
the ability to mount the same structure

on ground screws, helicals, w-posts, or
cast-in-place foundations (or a hybrid
solution). For roof-mount projects,

14 nacleanenergy.com
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015