It is interesting to note that the market in Europe hasn’t waited for lower prices to develop while prices started to go down significantly in 2023 and especially after summer (see above), the lead time to develop utility-scale PV plants is in general about more than one year.
As it has been mentioned numerous times, even the COVID pandemic wasn’t able to halt the PV market in Europe and globally.
The wake-up call for several countries was the deadline of the 2020 renewable energy targets and the acceleration of 2019 can mostly be attributed to the political change seen in several key countries from 2017 onwards: France or Spain, for instance, saw a set of ambitious energy policies that allowed PV to develop faster.
Consequence of new policies in key countries following the energy stress caused by the war in Ukraine. While PV market development was already growing in Europe, it accelerated significantly after February 2022.
The new German coalition paved the way for the current acceleration of the market, while prices were skyrocketing in 2021 and 2022.
Hence, the major price increase seen in 2021 and 2022 for PV modules, mostly coming from disrupted value chains in China and increased transport costs, didn’t halt or reduce the PV market in Europe; it continued growing significantly.