A Latest GTM Research indicates that with the continuous fall in the prices of solar PV modules all over the world, the balance-of-system (BOS) components costs will assume the biggest chunk in the cost of a PV project.
The report points out those BOS costs, which constituted nearly 44.8% for a normal crystalline silicon (c-Si) utility-scale project is likely to go up to 50.6% in 2012. It suggests that the economic measures makes the industry to look beyond the cost gains of solar modules and drives it to achieve such gains for important BOS components and related services.
The report, which runs for 140 pages, includes over 100 exhibits and offers reporting on all photovoltaic system components other than module and inverter. The report features cost guidelines for BOS, size of the component market and demand for mounting structures globally in countries such as Japan, china, Rest of Europe, Italy, Germany and the U.S. It also offers a complete study on the product improvements and cost of important BOS components.
The report in addition to working on BOS costs up to 2013 also analyzes marketing shares of mounting structures for every country all over the world, which constitute the biggest percentage in the BOS component prices.. The report predicts that the demand for rooftop mounting structures will slide from its 83% share in 2010 to 66% by 2015 due to increase in the ground mounted and fixed and tracking type of installations in the Asian and North American markets. The report anticipates that ground mounted fixed systems and tracking systems will hold 27% and 7% of worldwide shares respectively by 2015.
According to Shayle Kann, GTM Research’s Solar Practice’ Managing Director, while the module continues to be the single costly part in a PV system, the collective costs of BOS components will ultimately cause increased action and improvement throughout the BOS value chain and will become a chief revenue opening in the solar PV market.
Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com/