Total cumulative photovoltaic installations in Southeast Asia are forecast to reach almost 5GW by 2016, according to the latest report from IMS Research.
The report, which analyzes the PV markets in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and Philippines, reveals that the region's solar installations will grow at 50% per year on average over the next five years, providing an attractive market for ailing suppliers in Europe. Installations have previously been dominated by Thailand, but other regions are also forecast to quickly grow and account for significant share of the market.
Although Southeast Asia accounted for less than 1% of global installations in 2011, IMS Research forecasts that its share will increase by more than four times by 2016. Annual installations are forecast to grow by 50% annually on average for the next five years and exceed 1 GW by 2015.
Thailand is expected to be the fifth largest market in Asia in 2012 (after China, Japan, India and Australia). Rapid growth in Thailand has been driven by the attractive ‘adder’ incentive scheme, which has resulted in the completion of several large ground-mounted systems.
However, a new incentive scheme to promote smaller roof-top systems is expected in 2013. As a result, the market share of utility-scale systems in Thailand is forecast to fall by 25% by 2016.
‘Although the market is currently dominated by Thailand, a number of countries within the Southeast Asia region have huge potential for PV and offer significant opportunities to suppliers, and these will account for a growing share of the market in the future,’ predicts Jessica Jin, PV market analyst at IMS Research.
‘Given its substantial and quickly growing need for electricity, the small amount of the population that currently has access to electricity, and its reliance on diesel generators on its thousands of islands, PV is an highly attractive solution for providing distributed electricity sources in Indonesia,’ Jin adds.
The report predicts that Indonesia will be the fastest growing market in the region installing close to 1 GW of PV over the next four years, with off-grid systems set to account for a significant share of this total.
IMS Research also found that although the region is home to some large manufacturing facilities for Western PV cell and module manufacturers, these manufacturers do not hold a significant market share. Five of the largest PV module suppliers to the region were found to be Chinese or Japanese manufacturers. In contrast, the majority of the largest system integrators are headquartered locally.
