Press Releases

Although global capital spending this year in the photovoltaics (PV) supply chain is expected to fall to its lowest level since 2006, indications signal that the downturn in investment has hit bottom and that purchases of equipment may soon rebound.

Capital spending among PV companies is set to drop to $2.3 billion in 2013, down 36 percent from $3.6 billion in 2012, according to the PV Manufacturing & Capital Spending Tool from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

The anticipated fall will represent the lowest level of spending since $2.4 billion in 2006. It also marks the second year of decline after the market peaked in 2011, as spending plunged by 75 percent in 2012. However, capital expenditures are expected to rebound in 2014, rising 30 percent to $3.0 billion.

“Companies across all nodes of the PV business have been lowering utilization rates and letting manufacturing lines go idle for the past year and a half,” said Jon-Frederick Campos, solar analyst at IHS. “PV firms have been doing this in an effort to counter overcapacity and mitigate declines in average selling prices (ASP). This phenomenon resulted in a major plunge in spending on new manufacturing equipment in 2012 and so far in 2013.  But with prices stabilizing and manufacturing on the rise in some segments of the PV market, signs are appearing that that the drop in capital spending may be coming to an end.”

Global revenue for light-emitting diode (LED) drivers used in general lighting applications will more than triple from 2012 to 2015, as the market for solid-state illumination booms, according a new report entitled “LED Driver ICs – World – 2013” from IMS Research, now part of IHS (NYSE: IHS).

Average pricing for Chinese-manufactured photovoltaic (PV) solar modules could surge by 45 percent in June, cutting some solar project IRRs to below 7 percent and further dampen demand in Europe as a result of the preliminary antidumping duties imposed in the European Union, according to IHS (NYSE: IHS).

Chinese modules carried an average price of $0.66 per watt (W) in March, and were expected to increase to $0.67/W in June, based on a forecast from the IHS Solar Module Price Index. However, with EU commissioners planning to impose import duties on solar modules from China, average pricing could surge to $0.97/W in June.

The market for industrial gearboxes and geared motors in the collective region covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is expected to decline by 4.2 percent this year as economic troubles continue to take their toll, according to the new report entitled “The World Market for Gearboxes and Geared Motors” from IMS Research, now part of IHS (NYSE: IHS).

Would live support be helpful in Automated Teller Machines (ATM) for thorny transactions such as credit-card payments, even if the cash-dispensing stations were originally built to be free of any human intermediaries to speed up operations? And could such a structure then cannibalize local bank branches and render them ineffectual?

Such are the vexing questions now confronting banks and the financial industry in the wake of Bank of America’s announcement in early April to roll out its new Teller Assist ATMs, according to insights from “ATMs – World – 2013 Report” by IMS Research, now part of IHS (NYSE: IHS).

The Chinese audio and video door phone market—including indoor units, outdoor units and accessories—was estimated to be worth $577 million in 2012. A total of 10.9 million audio and video indoor units were estimated to be shipped, with video units accounting for more than 80 percent of them, according to a new report published by IMS Research – now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).

The supplier base for photovoltaic (PV) inverters further fragmented in 2012, with the total market share of the 10 largest suppliers falling by more than 4 percentage points, according to the latest quarterly report from IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).  

This was partly due to strong growth in demand from China and Japan, where most of the Top 10 largest suppliers have limited presence. SMA Solar Technology’s share of global revenue fell for the third consecutive year to slightly more than 25 percent—as the PV market continued to fragment and demand for its products weakened in its core markets. A flurry of recent M&A activity, including Advanced Energy’s acquisition of REFUsol and ABB’s purchase of Power-One, also has had little impact on the competitive landscape and has resulted in only minimal changes to the supplier rankings.

For the foreseeable future, wind turbines, and consequently wind generators, will continue to get bigger and bigger—both in terms of average physical size and in the average output power rating of these machines.

The average power rating of a utility scale wind generator was 1.75 megawatts in 2011 and is expected to rise to nearly 2.4 megawatts by 2017, according to a recently released report entitled “The World Market for Wind Generators” from IMS Research, now part of IHS (NYSE: IHS).

If the security boom is over then it seems that end users haven’t got the message, with 45 percent claiming that their security budget had increased during 2012, according to an end-user survey conducted by IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS). In the survey of almost 200 representatives from end users of physical security equipment across North America, 44 percent also said that their annual budget exceeded $100,000. Another 20 percent exceeded $500,000 a year.

The worldwide market for PV storage is forecast to grow rapidly to reach $19 billion in 2017, from less than $200 million in 2012, according to a new report entitled ‘The Role of Energy Storage in the PV Industry’ from IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).

Following the introduction of an energy storage subsidy in Germany, global installations of PV storage systems are forecast to grow by more than 100 percent a year on average over the next five years, to reach almost 7 gigawatts (GW) in 2017 and worth $19 billion. Germany will account for nearly 70 percent of storage installed in residential PV systems worldwide in 2013.However, opportunities also will exist in other regions and applications in the future and Germany’s share of the global market naturally will fall as a result.

The attached figure shows the IHS forecast for global PV storage system market revenue.