Ontario PV Market to Grow 270% To Reach 455 MW in 2011

Jon Worren, Clear Sky AdvisorsDespite ongoing political and regulatory uncertainty, Ontario's PV market will continue it's growth in 2011 and in total we expect there to be 455MW of new installations in 2011, up from 169MW in 2010. Our forecast shows that Ontario's Photovoltaic (PV) market is expected to reach cumulative installations of 2,650 MW by 2015. This includes demand from the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program, and non-FIT program sources such as the RESOP and the Korean Consortium agreement.The market forecast is based on in-depth interviews with over 65 key stakeholders and surveys with over 50 installers in the Ontario market  - all undertaken between December, 2010 and February, 2011.  Our key findings include:

• Persistent political and regulatory uncertainty around the political FIT program has caused a number of module and inverter manufacturers to postpone or scale back decisions to invest and hire in the province.
• Delays during the permitting process will push the vast majority of FIT utility-scale demand back into 2012-2013. As a consequence, ClearSky Advisors has downgraded its market forecast by more than 200MW for 2011. 
• An increasing number of suppliers, reduced global costs, and delayed demand have combined to drive expected module prices down in Ontario
• As demand for solar panels increasingly switch to Ontario-made content some supply constraints may be experienced in the first half of 2011. However, by the second half of the year, we expect such supply constraints to be eliminated.

Supply and Demand

Domestic Content Requirements (DCR) restrict the amount of equipment that is available to developers in Ontario. Though there has been concern that installation volumes would be limited by supply shortages, it is now most likely that there will be sufficient capacity to meet demand from 2011-2015.