By Denis Thomas, Economist, European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA)
In 2008, the global PV market reached 5.6GW and the cumulative PV power installed totalled almost 15GW compared to 9GW in 2007. Spain represented almost half of the new installations in 2008 with about 2.5GW, followed by Germany with 1.5GW additional connected systems. USA confirmed its trend with 342MW newly installed PV systems, followed by South Korea which registered 274MW of PV installations over the year. Italy connected almost 260MW while France, Portugal, Belgium and the Czech Republic made good scores confirming Europe’s global leadership in the deployment of solar PV energy. A diversification of the market is taking place with countries adopting appropriate support policies.
