...Suppliers including California’s SunPower Corp. (SPWR), which has gained more than fivefold this year, and China’s Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. (YGE) are driving the rally as panel prices stabilize. Installations at power plants and on roofs will swell 40 percent this year from a 6.1 percent pace last year....
...“It’s pretty clear over the last nine months that things have improved significantly,” Robert Petrina, Yingli’s managing director for the Americas, said in an interview.
Yingli, based in Baoding, China, was the biggest panel maker last year based on 2.3 gigawatts of shipments, and the company expects that figure to increase as much as 43 percent this year. The global photovoltaic industry may install as much as 42.7 gigawatts of panels this year, 40 percent more than in 2012, according to New Energy Finance.
The strongest companies are now selling panels above cost, according to Chase. A year ago, more than half the Chinese panel-makers in the Large Solar Energy index reported negative gross margins. That’s a strong sign that the industry is starting to turn the corner from the last two years, when factories were overbuilt.
The top 10 manufacturers boosted their total panel-production capacity 19 percent to 20.6 gigawatts in 2012 from two years earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those factories came online as demand waned. Panel installations more than doubled from 2009 to 2010. The pace slowed to 58 percent in 2011, and then slumped to 6.1 percent last year.
Demand is climbing in Japan, where the country is promoting wider use of renewable energy instead of nuclear power, and China, where the government expects its installed capacity to double this year. The two countries will be the top solar markets this year, according to New Energy Finance.
www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-31/...ry-as-demand-surges.html?