It’s understandable there are a lot of players active in the small California residential / commercial (R/C)solar market. The California Energy Commission (CEC) dataset has over 80 names. From 2007 until 2010 year-to-date, the CEC reports $3.0 billion in installations and $604 million in incentive payments. Costs may be drifing down but are still a lofty $8,217/kW for the average 5.0 kW install.
So far in 2010 cells from the top eight companies have been placed in over 75% of the installs. The market leader, SunPower (SPWRA), is now closely followed by Sharp with both companies having approximately 19% of the market. The next six companies, Suntech (STP), Evergreen (ESLR), Kyocera, BP Solar, Sanyo, and REC (REC.OL) are closely grouped with 6-8% market share.
But even with the California R/C market topping 61,000 kW in 2009, this only represents a small fraction of the 12,300 MW produced worldwide in 2009. If the five key market conditions I previously identified, namely:
- continuation of federal and state incentives which drive down the cost of installs significantly (California incentives will grow to around $600 million per year in California by 2015, this is real money) ,
- continuation of current tariff practices that allow offsetting average rates, net metering, and exemption from standby charges,
- continued high energy costs allocated to the residential sector in the California IOUs
- no run up, and potential drops, in the cost of solar, and
- no major increases in financing costs for solar systems,
continue, it looks like there is plenty of production capacity worldwide to supply any level of growth in California’s small systems market.
Disclosurer: the author doesn’t own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this post (except in index funds).