Canadian Solar PV Market

The National Survey Report of PV Power Applications in Canada provides information on the Canadian Solar PV market and provides some of these key findings:

Installed PV power: Canada’s total PV power installed capacity reached 94.57. MW in 2009 compared to 32.72 MW at the end of 2008. The grid-connected market now accounts for 87% of the market in 2009 compared to only 33% in 2008. This is a significant growth sector that is spurred by the new Province of Ontario’s feed in tariff launched in 2006 and expanded in 2009. The grid connected applications included 11% for residential and building integrated applications, and 76% for three large ground-mounted utility scale systems.

Costs & prices: Module prices (weighted average) have gradually declined from CAD 11.09 in 1999 to CAD 3.31 in 2009. This represents an average annual price reduction of slightly over 10% over the 10-year period. The installed price for systems range between CAD 6 000 to 8 000 per kilowatt for grid-connected installations, and CAD 16 000 per kilowatt for off-grid systems that include storage.

PV Production: 42 MW of PV modules were manufactured by Day4 and Centennial Solar in Canada. In 2009, 5N Plus and Bécancour Silicon produced 125 metric tonnes of CdTe and 182 metric tonnes of silicon, respectively.

PV labour: There are 2700 full-time, labour places equivalent engaged in PV activities in the public and private sectors (R&D, manufacturing, distributors, dealers, retailers, system installers, consultants and developers) in Canada in 2009. This is a 30% increase compared to 2008. The largest increase is in the public R&D sector where federal and provincial research funding agencies increased their investment in Canadian universities to augment the level of R&D activities in the field of materials and solar cells in 2009.

Public budget for PV: Total public budgets in Canada significantly increased to $31.2 million CAD which is an increase of over 315% due to the market incentive program in the province of Ontario. This is due to a large increase in the incentive program in Ontario that provides a feed-in tariff (FIT) for PV installations that range between CAD 0.80 to 0.44 per kilowatt hour. The balance of this budget which funded R&D and demonstration budget was CAD 5.2 million in 2009.

Click here to download the full “National Survey Report of PV Power Application in Canada 2009, NRCan / International Energy Agency.”

Past studies are provided below:National Survey Report of PV Power Application in Canada 2008, Natural Resources Canada/IEA