Outlook on near term solar market volumes
Lets start with our home country, the Netherlands. In the first half of this year we observed a 50% decline in projects from January to August, as well as a decline in sales conversion from 20% to 15%. This equates to a continued market volume collapse of 75%. In February we wrote that it was likely to see a slight improvement, but not much. In fact we have seen the decline continue. Current volume stands at less than 20% of the market peak seen in early 2023.
This aligns to anecdotal evidence from our conversations with clients. Many continue to face significant challenges and have started turning their attention to other products, branching out to air conditioning, heat pumps, charging stations and batteries. In our view this is the right thing to do. It spreads risks and also allows installers to tell their clients the whole picture. We’ve noticed that companies which made this transition early have shown a much higher survival rate. This also means that unfortunately we have seen many of our dear clients filing for bankruptcy.
What lies ahead? As always this is very hard to say. From our data we see stabilisation and even some minor growth in September. This is obviously also caused by standard seasonality effects, but at least we are happy to see positive numbers again.
Although the Dutch market has taken the biggest hit in terms of volumes, we also see that the German and Belgian markets have been struggling. The Belgian market has seen a very strong decline in December and January, but has recovered now to 75% of the volumes seen in late 2023. The German market has also taken a significant dive from 2023, and an additional 40% during 2024, but now seems to have stabilised.
Jinko and JA maintain popularity, while Aiko sees impressive growth in the Netherlands
In the solar panel sector, we see that Jinko, Trina Solar and JA Solar are very popular brands with decent market shares in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. However, a standout performer in the Netherlands is Aiko. They’ve come from a market share of less than 1% in early 2023 to a staggering 35% recently. Well done Aiko! Another notable insight is that Sunpower is the second-largest brand in our Belgian dataset but does not even break into the top 10 in Belgium and Germany.
Enphase claims market leadership in the Netherlands, while Huawei dominates in Belgium.
When we analysed the market share data of inverters in the Netherlands, we were astonished by Enphase’s incredible growth trajectory. The results were so strong that we were sceptical about the correctness of the data. After triple-checking, we confirmed that in the Netherlands, Enphase had a market share of 25% in the Dutch market in early 2023 but had grown to a stunning 46%. This has gone mainly at the cost of SolarEdge, which dropped from 39% to 12%. Huawei is also on a steady growth path in terms of market shares, from almost non-existent to a current 8%. Growatt is a steady performer, around 10%-12%.
In the Belgian market, we see a very different picture. Here, Huawei is the dominant player, with a market share of 50%-60%. SolarEdge also took a hit in Belgium, declining from 30% in early 2022 to <10%. Solis has emerged as a solid contender, growing to over a 15% share.
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