Data indicate that the use of solar photovoltaics (PV) in the United States and Canada is on the rise.
Annual shipments of PV modules and cells reported by U.S. manufacturers in 1999 reached a record level of 77,000 peak killowatts (kWp), which refer to the maximum electric power output of the cells and modules, up 52% from 1998, according to a recent U.S. Energy Information Administration report, Annual Photovoltaic Module/Cell Manufacturers Survey. In Canada, the use of PV applications has grown at an average annual rate of 29% over the past seven years, with total revenues estimated in 1999 at ~$US27 million ($C40 million), according to Canadian PV Power Market 1999, a Natural Resources Canada (NRC) report published in June 2000.
The growth in U.S. sales is largely due to a strong export market, which accounted for 72% of the shipments in 1999. Germany and Japan, countries with increased residential demand for PVs due to subsidies for PV systems for housing and favorable tax credits for the use of PV applications and loan repayment time frames, each received over 25% of U.S. export shipments.
Most of the 1999 growth in Canada is due to increased cottage and recreational PV market applications. “This market is mainly off-grid applications where PV has been proven to be a reliable and cost-effective solution,” says one of the report’s authors, Lisa Dignard-Bailey of NRC’s Energy Diversification Research Laboratory in Varennes, Québec.
Industrial applications in Canada are off-grid and remote; and according to Dignard-Bailey, they include “telecommunications repeater sites on companies.” Off-grid commercial and industrial applications in Canada rose from 2825 kWp in 1998 to 3375 kWp in 1999. —PATRICIA E. DEMPSEY
source: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-a/35/i03/html/02news5.html 01feb01
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