PV module costs and prices: what is really happening now?

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  Crystalline PV module and polysilicon prices.

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Sam Wilkinson

Sam Wilkinson is the Photovoltaics Group Research Analyst at IMS Research. Sam is based at the company’s headquarters in Wellingborough, UK.

PV-Tech recently announced that its most read blog post of 2011 was an article from IMS Research entitled ‘PV module costs and prices – what is really happening?’, written almost 18 months ago in August 2010. The popularity of this post clearly says something about what the PV industry was talking about throughout all of last year, and still will be talking about in 2012.

Looking back now at the article I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of the predictions made versus what happened in reality, as well as considering what the future holds 12 months on.

Why didn’t the PV industry see 2011’s price collapse coming and why did it hurt so much?