According to the recent study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers – “On the brink of a bright future?” – the newly introduced feed-in tariff will increase the UK’s solar photovoltaic market five-fold in 2010 alone, reports Energy Efficiency.
Currently, the UK has approximately 32MW of installed solar capacity, made up of mainly small domestic panels less than 3kW. PwC suggests that this figure could increase by five times this year, and accelerate to 1GW by 2015, driven by the new FiT.
“The significant expansion that may be just around the corner will change today’s ‘cottage industry’ into a much more professionally organised sector,” says Daniel Guttmann, Renewables Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“The industry will need to adapt and develop quickly to ensure that as much of the opportunity in terms of job and value creation is captured within the UK,” he adds.
The Sustainability and Climate Change Director for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gus Schellekens, said that while its use in the UK is still very small, solar PV has a promising future if supported by strong government policies that sustain early deployments and support the technology’s transition to cost competitiveness. This is the technology that uses cells to capture and convert sunlight into electricity.