Thursday, January 13, 2011

U.S. Solar Project Integrators Now Rank Among World's Largest

U.S. PV system integrators are quickly becoming among the most active in the world in terms of number of installations performed, according to the latest analysis from IMS Research. In its report, the company revealed that three large-scale system providers from the U.S. appeared among the ten largest integrators in 2010 for the first time.

The number of system integrators in the U.S. is quickly increasing. Of the 400 most active system integrators identified by IMS Research, nearly 30% of them are headquartered in the U.S., even though the country accounts for less than 10% of installations completed worldwide.

2010 saw high demand for utility-scale systems, which grew the fastest of all system types, increasing by over 150% from 2009. Sunpower, First Solar and SunEdison, all U.S.-based providers of these systems, were able to capitalize on this surging demand and cement places in the list of the largest integrators.

"2010 was an incredible year for utility-scale PV, and a record capacity from such systems was installed worldwide during the year," comments analyst Sam Wilkinson. "Several very large plants were completed during the year, such as First Solar's Sarnia project in Canada and SunEdison’s Rovigo plant in Italy.

"These plants have set new standards for the size of PV systems," Wilkinson adds. "They have also enabled these suppliers to become some of the largest integrators in the world."

In 2009, the rankings were dominated by German companies, and the largest integrator was Q-Cells. Although a number of U.S. suppliers have emerged amongst the leaders in 2010, preliminary results from IMS Research's next quarterly report show that a number of German companies, such as juwi, still performed well, the company says.

SOURCE: PV Market Research

No comments:

Post a Comment