Global PV Monitoring Deployments Outpace PV Plant Installations in 2013

Driven by new installations and retrofits, the PV monitoring market grew by more than 90 percent between 2012 and 2013.

Mike Munsell May 21, 2014

Mike Munsell

Marketing Manager
GTM Research

Mike Munsell is a Marketing Manager with GTM Research. Mike covers key findings from GTM Research's solar, grid edge and energy storage reports and data services. He also hosts GTM's weekly Energy News Quiz.

Solar PV monitoring, the suite of hardware, software and services that allows stakeholders to track and assess the production and performance solar PV systems, is a burgeoning global market with 39.7 gigawatts installed in 2013, according to GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting’s most recent report, Global PV Monitoring: Technologies, Markets and Leading Players, 2014-2018. That’s more than the 37 gigawatts of new PV installed globally last year. Driven by new U.S. and Asian installations and retrofits in Europe, the market grew by more than 90 percent from the 20.5 gigawatts added in 2012.

“The amount of new monitoring solutions retrofitted to older plants in 2013 totaled over 6.3 gigawatts, or approximately 15 percent of the monitoring business," said report author Cedric Brehaut. "This allowed several European countries to remain attractive markets for monitoring providers despite the downturn in new PV installation, as in Germany, Italy or Eastern Europe. And surprisingly, the U.S. market accounted for almost 30 percent of global monitoring retrofits, adding nearly 2 gigawatts of monitoring systems beyond those deployed in new power plants.”

The PV monitoring vendor landscape is highly competitive and filled with downstream firms, inverter manufacturers and independent software providers, all of different sizes. The top 38 vendors in the space each have at least 500 megawatts monitored or added 100 megawatts in 2013, and the 70 providers analyzed in the report account for a combined aggregate fleet exceeding 79 gigawatts.

FIGURE: Global PV Monitoring Competitive Landscape

Source: Global PV Monitoring: Technologies, Markets and Leading Players, 2014-2018

By 2018, GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting expect the global PV monitoring market to reach 70.8 gigawatts annually, with the majority of the new monitored systems being sited in Asia.

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To learn more about the Global PV Monitoring: Technologies, Markets and Leading Players, 2014-2018 report, please visit https://www.greentechmedia.com/research/report/global-pv-monitoring-technologies-markets-and-leading-players-2014-2018.