Asian markets dominated by niche BoS suppliers lead the market

Wellingborough, U.K. (March 4, 2015) -- IHS (NYSE: IHS), the leading global source of critical information and insight, today announced that the global photovoltaic (PV) balance-of-system (BoS) market is forecast to grow at an average rate of 5 percent per year, reaching $21 billion in 2019. China, India and other large markets in Asia dominated by niche BoS suppliers, will account for 44 percent of global BoS revenues in 2019. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is forecast to reach 34 percent of revenues, while the Americas will comprise 21 percent.

According to the "PV Balance of System Equipment – 2015" report, growth in EMEA will be led by the commercial market, which is forecast to reach 11.5 GW in 2019. "The Asian market is also highly attractive for BoS suppliers, especially in the ground-mount mounting market, where local steel manufacturers are very active presently, and this creates a huge opportunity for experienced PV mounting suppliers from EMEA and the Americas to expand abroad," said Cormac Gilligan, senior solar analyst for IHS Technology.

Structural BoS (SBoS), which is composed of ground-mount trackers, fixed-tilt and rooftop mounting systems, will account for 45 percent of the global PV BoS market, reaching $9.3 billion in 2019. Within this category, rooftop-mounting systems are forecast to grow 5 percent per year, due to strong global growth in both the residential and commercial rooftop sectors.

The electrical BoS (EBoS) market, composed of DC cabling, connectors, monitoring hardware and combiner boxes, will grow faster than the SBoS market; revenues are expected to reach just under $3 billion in revenue in 2019. "The EBoS market is set to grow rapidly, primarily because these components will handle higher voltages and assist in arc-fault detection, isolation and other health and safety requirements," Gilligan said.

The scope of the IHS "PV Balance of System Equipment – 2015" report is segmented into electrical BoS products, such as DC cabling, combiner box, connectors, inverters and system monitoring hardware, and structural BoS products, such as rooftop and ground-mount structural mounting products. It covers the total market for PV BoS equipment, which is defined as any part of a PV system's hardware excluding the PV module. The report does not analyze components on the AC side of the inverter (e.g., AC cabling or AC combiner boxes). For more information about this report, visit here.

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