Taiwan, which joined the gigawatt (GW) solar PV market club in 2019, is well set to ramp up its solar PV deployment exceeding 2GW annually in coming years to march towards the goal of 20GW in 2025, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The country installed 1.6GW of new Solar PV capacity to end 2019 at cumulative solar PV generation capacity of 4.3GW. Moreover, Taiwan is estimated to add record 2.25GW of new solar PV deployment in 2020.

In September 2019, Taiwan announced the new solar plan for 2019-20 to bring new investment and business opportunities of around NT$222bn (US$7.5bn). The plan expects solar capacity to reach 6.5GW by 2020 end. In mid-term, the Government targets PV installation to reach 20GW in 2025 with contribution of 3GW from rooftop PV and 17GW from ground mounted systems.

To support these ambitious goals and attract developers and investors, Taiwan is encouraging feed-in-tariff (FIT) policy and tariff rates. Though the Government recently revised FITs with a minor cut for solar which are applicable from the start of 2020, rates are still attractive to drive downstream PV market. The revised FITs for solar PV are NT$3.9408-5.7788 per KWh (US$0.13-0.19).

Tarun Bhutani, Project Manager at GlobalData, comments: “Taiwanese regulations restrict solar developers from buying modules made in China to protect local manufacturers. Moreover, local modules that have voluntary product certification (VPC) provides developers 6% bonus to their FITs.”

The VPC is awarded to locally-made high-efficiency cells and modules through a testing regime. This incentive not only protects local module suppliers but boosts indigenous cell & module manufacturing.

Bhutani continues: “Module overcapacity in China has continued to put pressure on PV pricing worldwide over the last few years. Taiwanese cell manufacturers had re-structured their businesses in the past by turning into module manufacturers to sustain with China’s pricing war. The industry is currently further diversifying and moving more downstream by re-modelling their business offerings on the project development and EPC work. Solar PV deployment drive is also helping this move firmly.”

Bhutani concludes: “Transition and focus towards ground mounted systems will be needed to drive GW scale market, which will face land acquisition challenges in the island country. The Government needs to collaborate effectively with developers, communities and landowners to overcome this hurdle.”