While the prices for German modules and products from Japan and Korea remained stable, products from China showed a slight price increase over the turn of the year and modules from several other Asian countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan or the Philippines increased in price yet again.
This is most certainly attributable to heightened interest in modules that continue to be approximately 10% less expensive compared with Chinese products.
Despite the mild temperatures, demand in Europe remains behind expectations that had budded in January. Apparently the urge to make purchases and carry out installations has been decidedly decelerated by the persistent bad news from policymakers. Price inquiries frequently fail to result in subsequent purchase orders. Often the desired profitability of a PV system cannot be materialized due to continued stagnating component prices and diminishing feed-in tariffs. A slowdown of this degressive adjustment in Germany is a long way away from being enough, an increase in remuneration alone would be able to prevent a further collapse of the market – but this presumably remains wishful thinking in light of the current political constellation.
The energy regulatory authority in France (CRE) also made further cuts and specified new feed-in tariff rates that apply for PV systems as of March 2014. Meanwhile in France there are invitations to tender for installations with a rated output of more than 100 kWp, so that these no longer participate in the feed-in tariff program. The French government increased the annual target for additional installations in March 2013 from 500 MWp to one gigawatt. Nevertheless only approximately 743 MWp were installed altogether in the year 2013. This was already the second year of decline.
The British Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) also published new feed-in tariff rates that will apply as of April 1, 2014. The remuneration for solar electricity from PV systems with a rated output of less than 50 kW declined by 3.5%. Moreover, according to information from government circles, efforts are being made in general to get away from subsidizing larger photovoltaic power stations through feed-in tariffs – first through cuts in the Renewables Obligation (RO) program and now through the new program “Contracts for Difference” for power stations with more than 5 MW of rated output.
All in all a much rougher wind than before is blowing for renewable energies in Europe – which does not make the market particularly interesting either for manufacturers or for investors. For these groups other continents are moving increasingly into the focus. Has the proverbial “caravan” finally drawn past Europe, or can it still be stopped?