The chairman of European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), Ingmar Wilhelm, said due to new market entrants in Asia, global solar market in 2011 may appear to be balanced between supply and demand or slightly oversupplied. Solar cells may drop as much as 10~20%. Meanwhile, Wilhelm is the director of business development department at Enel Green Power.
Wilhelm pointed out that the global demand for solar cells will increase 39% to be 53 million KW. However, new Japanese and Korean companies entering the marketing and existing companies expanding current capacity will possibly result in excess supply.
A number of large cap companies announced expansion plans in 2010. For example, First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), the single largest supplier of solar cells, plans to double its production capacity by 2012 to be 2.7 million KW. Yingli (NYSE: YGE), on the other hand, plans to increase its production capacity by 0.7 million KW to be 1.7 million KW.