The Intersolar Europe Conference 2024 took place under the umbrella of Europe’s largest alliance of exhibitions for the energy industry, The smarter E Europe, from June 18–19. The conference covers the most important topics of the solar industry each year. This year’s event was characterized by a mature solar industry that is no longer focused only on deploying solar, but also on grid integration and the harmonization of production and consumption
In the opening session of the conference, Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO at EDP, Marcus Fendt, Managing Director and CSO at The Mobility House, Franz Josef Feilmeier, CEO at Fenecon, Katharina Eikelberg, Senior Vice President Global Communication & Sustainability at SMA Solar Technology AG and Bruce Douglas, CEO at the Global Renewables Alliance, as well as Markus Elsässer, CEO of Solar Promotion, spoke about the greatest opportunities and challenges of the industry. Topics included the increasing negative price of PV electricity on the spot market and the difficulties the PV manufacturing industry is facing in Europe. “Low-cost energy should never be a problem. We just have to figure out a way to deal with it,” said Stilwell d’Andrade.
The panelists also addressed the lack of political initiative in creating a reliable investment climate for renewables. “We have no stability, no solid framework,” Eikelberg lamented.
Market on course for strong growth
Despite challenges, the solar market has been on a steep growth trajectory for three years – this was also confirmed in the market survey Global Market Outlook for Solar Power 2024–2028 presented at the conference by the European solar association SolarPower Europe. With an additional 447 gigawatts (GW), the PV market grew by 87 percent in 2023 over the previous year. However, in order to triple the amount of renewable sources of energy as set out at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, we would need to install 3 GW per day, Douglas calculated. Two issues related to the use of installed capacity according to consumption dominated the discussions at the Intersolar Europe Conference: increased use of battery storage and flexibility.
Large installations on the rise
When comparing sectors, a notable increase in the utility-scale segment was visible at the Intersolar Europe Conference. This segment is also experiencing growth in China, which is the largest solar market. According to the Global Market Outlook, more than half of the overall new PV capacity (253 GW) was installed in this country alone, while the rest of the world only installed a total of 194 GW. For this reason, the conference featured topics such as EPC (engineering, procurement and construction), O&M (operation and maintenance) and asset management, with a focus on the latest trends in using artificial intelligence.
In light of the growing utility-scale segment, a hot topic at this year’s conference were hybrid power plants. More and more utility-scale installations are planned and built in combination with battery storage systems in order to match the load profile with the generation profile using energy storage.
Other key topics at the conference included agricultural PV and floating PV. As the competition for land between solar power generation and other types of land use persists, dual-use concepts are becoming more and more important.
The maturity of the solar industry was evident not only in the discussion on balancing consumption and generation and the electrification of the economy and society, but also in the increasing relevance of topics such as the circular economy and the recycling of solar products, as well as the revamping and repowering old systems. A huge potential is starting to develop in this area, where the efficiency of old systems can be dramatically increased by renewing them.
The next Intersolar Europe Conference will take place in Munich from May 6–7, 2025.