Reported by Jeanny H. Lim

What do you see as the trends and market forces driving PV technology in the second half of 2011?

The obvious market forces in 2011 are the FiT reductions and the module oversupply/price reduction. The FiT reductions are forcing investors and installer to optimize system cost and find new methods to increase system production. Module oversupply is increasing competition between module manufacturers and forcing them into either reducing prices or looking for value-add services/products to offer to their customers.

How are PV prices expected to develop in the second half?

PV prices are definitely declining. The industry’s learning curve, together with general price reduction of module will probably reduce overall PV prices by another 5%-10% by year’s end.

Where do you put your focus this year, in terms of business growth and technology development?

SolarEdge sees growth in all major markets and especially in the U.S.A. and some European major markets (Germany and Italy). In these markets, our technology is well accepted into the early majority part of the customer base and we see rapid growth.

In terms of product focus, we are focusing on our module-embedded products. These are sold to module manufacturers to be embedded in solar modules and provide true differentiation to the module vendor and real value-add to the end customer: Added energy through module-MPPT, lower O&M cost through module-level monitoring, safety and flexible design.

Jeanny H. Lim is Editor-in-Chief of InterPV. Send your comments to swied@infothe.com.