SE Asia's solar power to reach 5GW by 2016

PV installations growing at 50% annually.

If this happens over a 5 year period, Southeast Asia will have 5GW by 2016.

This is expected by market researcher IHS. It is also projecting that annual installations by 2015 would reach 1GW across Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.

“Although the market is currently dominated by Thailand, a number of countries within the Southeast Asia region have huge potential for PV and offer significant opportunities to suppliers, and these will account for a growing share of the market in the future," said Jessica Jin, PV market analyst at IMS Research, part of IHS, said.

Growth in Thailand has primarily been large-scale ground mounted system but the growth is set to continue with a new incentive scheme that promotes residential roof-top systems that is expected to be introduced in 2013. The market research firm expects the market share of utility-scale systems in Thailand to fall by 25% by 2016 as a result.

Jin noted that PV is a highly attractive solution for providing electricity in Indonesia. The country has a quickly growing need for electricity, and only a small amount of the population has access to electricity. In thousands of its islands, it relies on diesel generators.

Currently the market in Southeast Asia is dominated by major Chinese and Japanese module manufacturers, while the largest system integrators were headquartered locally.

For more.