The year 2016 was a record breaker for shipments of solar modules in Canada. Canadian Solar expects to see another record-breaking year in 2017. Renewables Now reporter Ivan Shumkov writes:
The company expects to ship between 6.5 GW and 7 GW of solar modules this year, including some 6.17 GW recognised in revenue. This compares to the just-reported total solar module shipments for 2016 of 5.23 GW, of which 5.2 GW were recognised in revenue.
Full-year revenue is projected to be between USD 4 billion and USD 4.2 billion, with 50%-60% coming from the solar module and components business.
As per the company’s downstream business, it expects to hook to the grid between 1 GW and 1.2 GW of solar power plants globally this year. Its ongoing projects are located in the US, Japan, China, the UK, India, Brazil and Africa.
Canadian Solar noted that it expects the cost of production to decline throughout the year as new internal wafer, cell and module capacity comes online, both inside and outside China. A reduction of the percentage of external purchases and OEM will have a positive effect as well.
As you can see on my chart below, solar power generation has taken off in exponential fashion in Canada. At the end of 2015 Canada had an installed photovoltaic capacity of 2,504 Megawatts.