Affected by soaring energy prices such as natural gas and electricity, there has been a boom in the installation of solar panels in British households, and the market for related products has risen. The solar panel supplier "Sun Shed" said that orders this year have increased by 4 times year-on-year. Everbright Securities believes that the European market is a frontal battlefield for mainstream photovoltaic companies, and it is also a region with strong profitability. The expansion of the photovoltaic market will be a long-term trend. Companies that are deeply involved in the European photovoltaic market are expected to obtain excess returns. It is recommended to pay attention to photovoltaic industry chain companies that are located in the European market.
Affected by climate change, summers in the UK have been getting hotter in recent years. Since the beginning of July, a heat wave has swept the entire northern hemisphere, causing Europe, which has always been mild, to enter "barbecue mode". Against this climatic backdrop, a massive grid crisis is spreading across Europe due to surging demand for electricity and a lack of supply capacity. Since July, as Russia has cut its natural gas supply to Europe sharply, Europe has lost an important source of power generation, making electricity prices in some European countries hit a record high.
In the face of soaring energy prices such as natural gas and electricity, there is a boom in the installation of solar panels in British households. The market for related products has risen, and some are even in short supply, and the waiting time for installation is getting longer and longer. The solar panel supplier "Sunshine" said that this year's orders have increased by four times year-on-year. Last year, customers waited two or three weeks to install solar panels, but now they need to wait two or three months.
As an important application scenario of distributed photovoltaics, rooftop photovoltaics are not limited by land, and the development conditions are relatively convenient. Spain, France and other countries have successively introduced policies and measures such as government subsidies, tax reduction and fee reduction, and accelerated grid connection approval to encourage the development of distributed photovoltaics. Research firm Wood Mackenzie believes that European rooftop photovoltaics have huge potential and are expected to continue to be an important growth pole for the European photovoltaic industry.
The draft EU REPowerEU plan proposes an increase of 15TWh of rooftop photovoltaic power generation in 2022. The draft also calls on the EU and governments to take action this year to reduce the time it takes to apply for permission to install rooftop PV installations to three months, and proposes that "by 2025, all new buildings, as well as existing buildings with energy consumption class D or above, will be Rooftop photovoltaics should be installed”.
The energy shortage caused by the shortage of natural gas supply has accelerated the process of energy transformation in Europe, and the goal of energy independence and transformation has become more urgent, which has promoted the rapid growth of the demand for solar thermal storage, and domestic enterprises are expected to benefit.
In March 2022, the European Parliament approved raising the 2030 renewable energy target to 30%. In the short term, the supply of traditional energy in Europe is limited, and in the long run, Europe will accelerate the transformation of its energy structure. The EU’s REPowerEU Plan in May and Germany’s new Renewable Energy Act (EEG) have both raised the PV installation target. With long-term favorable policies, Europe will still be the largest source of demand for Chinese modules. Component demand will reach 55.6GW. Europe is the hottest market for imported modules in the first half of 2022. At present, a total of 42.4 GW of PV modules have been imported from China, a year-on-year increase of 137%, showing a trend of monthly growth.
Europe is a key export destination for domestic photovoltaic companies. According to Eurostat data, 75% of the 8 billion euros worth of solar modules imported by the EU in 2020 came from China. According to data from the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, in the first half of this year, the export volume of photovoltaic modules was 78.6GW, a year-on-year increase of 74.3%; the module export value was 22.02 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of more than double, and overseas market demand was hot. CITIC Securities said that Europe is accelerating the progress of photovoltaic project construction, and overseas installed capacity is expected to maintain a relatively rapid growth. The global installed capacity is expected to exceed 230GW in 2022.