Global Growth of Growth of PV

The global volume of installed photovoltaic installation is growing fast, this is a well-known fact. But not so widely known is the exact growth rate so I will give some figures for a deep insight.
Different countries are different, so have a look at different countries.

An incredible dynamic in the growth of PV-installations

Fifteen years ago, the USA was the leader in PV-installations. In the year 1996, Japan became the leader but in 2005 another change at the top happened, Germany, supporting PV with high subsidies, took the lead. But the PV-market has a very high dynamic and in 2011 Italy installed already more PV-panels than Germany. This race is interesting, but not the core of the global change in the PV market. Let's have a look at the growth rate itself:

The growth rate is growing at 3% per year!

If we plot the growth rate between two years, we find an astonishing plot. Beginning in the mid ninety's, the growth rate was about 20% per year. And sometimes I have the feeling, many people have adapted this and believe in a moderate growth of PV. The last 15 year show a very different picture. The growth rate itself was growing. And a simple linear approximation results in a slope of 2.9 percent points (absolute!) per year, resulting in an approximated growth of the PV installation 2011 compared to 2010 of 67% (the actual value was even higher with 76%)

Reasons for the PV Growth

This mind-blowing effect is not widely anticipated. The reason for this effect is no longer the high subsidies of German PV-installation, the reason is, more and more countries start installing PV at a very high rate, as the first graph shows. And the reason behind this is, that many countries have much more sun as Germany combined with the hard drop of PV-prices. This results in an unprecedented dynamic, higher market volume result in higher production rate, higher production volume results in lower prices due to a learning curve.

The learning curve tells us, if we double the production, the price will fall about 20%. The dropping price opens more markets, if the price is below the power price at the consumer, he will install PV soon. 

Where will this growth end, this is not clear, but I will write about that topic soon.