Page 466 - A Comprehensive Guide to Solar Energy Systems

Chapter 24 • Global Growth Trends and the Future of Solar Power 479

solar installed on fewer than 0.5% of the city’s over 3 million homes [22]. The opportunity
is thus great. Italy and Germany today enjoy markets with over 70% rooftop solar, which is
very different from their starting points [1]. France remains balanced, but with the tender
system expected to deliver up to 15 GW in the next 6 years, this could be a market where
utility scale solar will gain dominance.
Globally, with the dominance of utility scale markets there is a situation where ground
mounted solar is in fact much more prevalent than roof top. In 2016, 21.6 GW of solar was
installed on roofs, while 55 GW was installed as utility scale projects [1]. This is more than
double the amount of rooftop solar. driven by uncapped subsidy schemes in the three
largest markets: China, the united States, and Japan [1], this has helped to increase the
utility scale solar power installations fraction of the global market to 72% in 2016.
This is a trend that is likely to continue, as countries are now beginning their solar pro­
grams with tender systems rather than feed­in­tariffs, but the same process is evident. In
India, for example, tenders are being used to drive cost effective deployment of ground
mounted solar power, but the government retains an ambitious target of 40% of its 100 GW
program to eventually be on roof tops. This is a model that is being embraced across the
world: Chile, mexico, uAE, Turkey, etc. All are looking to tender driven solar energy proj­
ects with a secondary development in rooftops.
SolarPower Europe forecasts that by 2020 the gap will be narrowing between the rate
of deployment of ground mounted and rooftop solar, and that by 2021 the trend will
reverse [1]. This trend is demonstrated in Fig. 24.6. In the high scenario, it is envisaged
that 82.6 GW of rooftop solar could be deployed against 79.4 GW of ground mounted [1].
This can be explained by the expected strong rooftop market growth in Europe, the united
States, Japan, and China, not to mention India, by the turn of the decade. As many of these
markets move into tenders and controlled ground mounted deployment, new business

FIGURE 24.6 Scenarios for global PV rooftop and utilities segments development 2016–21. SolarPower Europe, 2017, p. 21.