This is an extract from the 13th edition of “Snapshot of Global PV Markets” published by IEA PVPS. It provides preliminary information on how the PV market developed in 2024. 

Evolution of annual installations

At least 2156.5 GW of cumulative capacity was installed by the end of 2024, with a further 90 GW possibly identified by IEA PVPS Experts, for an estimated global cumulative capacity of 2 246.5 GW. At least 554.1 GW but perhaps as much as 601.9 GW of PV systems have been commissioned in the world last year. Countries in the IEA PVPS programme in 2024 covered 80% of annual and cumulative capacity – if India, who joined IEA PVPS from 2025 is included, this coverage increases to 85%. The growth rate fell back closer to habitual values at just over 30%, down from 89% over 2023. In 2024, at least 34 countries installed more than 1 GW, up from 29 countries in 2023. 25 countries have more than 10 GW of total cumulative capacity and seven have more than 40 GW. China alone is estimated to have passed 1 TW; the European Union (as EU27) now has 339.4 GW. The USA ranks third at 224.1 GW and India has overtaken Japan to take fourth place with 124.6 GW. Germany and Japan will both pass the 100 GW mark in 2025. Global markets have seen sustained double-digit growth over the past five years; whilst 2024 “only” saw about 32% growth compared to 2023’s nearly 90% growth, the absolute volumes are remarkable. China’s market had another dynamic year as internal forces pushed to absorb manufacturing capacity bringing the national market share to 59% of new global capacity. The EU and the USA accounted for just 18% of new capacity as other markets also developed strongly – India, Brazil and Pakistan collectively installed the same volume as the EU.

Growth rates in individual countries remain subject to local policies and international market prices and considerable variations can be seen between countries and year to year. Whilst growth rates have slowed (but remain positive) in many markets, others have stabilised or contracted. The EU had low growth as continued expansion in Germany and France was balanced by slow-downs in Spain and the Netherlands. Of particular note, the Turkish market grew over the past two years and is expected to remain strong as local manufacturing develops and electricity prices remain high following the Lira’s depreciation. Several GW were installed and commissioned over the end of 2023 and early 2024, impacting how data was recorded in previous reports. 

The 2024 Indian market benefited from both low-cost imports and a cut-off date for using them, as well as corporate green mandates. Pakistan had very strong additions to new capacity. Data quality is uncertain when it comes to installed volumes, but large volumes of modules were imported in 2023 and 2024 (24 GW over 2 years according to the China Chamber of Commerce), and larger volumes were installed in 2024 with reported new capacity more than 13 times 2023 volumes at 17 GW. Policy changes have impacted deployment budgets in South Korea, whilst stabilised consumer electricity prices have contributed to the Spanish reduced market. These developments have not been significant enough to impact the regional distribution shares of new capacity in major markets as China continues to dominate

Impact of over-capacity in manufacturing

In 2023, manufacturing capacity largely outstripped the market’s ability to absorb new module availability. Module stocks in China and Europe grew from already high 2022 values to reach an estimated 150 GW by the end of 2023. In 2024, stocks remained high as relatively stable markets in Europe and China failed to absorb these historical stocks. Manufacturers continued to deliver low-price modules to markets in an effort to secure cash flows, and so module prices continued to decrease across 2024. Concerted action by Chinese manufacturing led to module prices stabilising in Q1 2025 due to controlled production cuts and upwards movement in upstream costs. These low prices, combined with different local contexts stimulated markets in China and a selection of countries including India, Pakistan, Brazil and supported modest growth in some countries in Europe. However, the pressure on the industry remains tremendous and solutions are quite complex: with all segments of the PV value chain in significant overcapacity, the global development of PV should accelerate rapidly to over 1 TW per year to absorb this overproduction. This is a challenge based on the current dynamics of the PV market, which could lead to massive PV developments in new business models, such as Direct Air Capture, production of green hydrogen or derivatives and more.

Top markets in 2024

The Chinese market grew again in 2024, although the rate slowed; it is certain that at least 309.4 GW was installed (official China reporting) but further estimations bring this to a possible 357.3 GW in 2024 (up from 277 GW in 2023 and 106 GW in 2022). With 62.6 GW of annual installations, the European Union ranked second, followed by the USA at 47.1 GW. India more than doubled last year’s new volumes to reach 31.9 GW (up from 13 GW). The remarkable influx of low-price modules in the Pakistani market has positioned them in a probable fourth place, although capacity estimations are approximate. Continued growth in Germany and Brazil sees these two countries maintain their places in the Top 5. Spain, Italy and France have national markets that fluctuate year to year, coming in and out of the Top Ten periodically; with stable or moderate growth in 2023 they all appear this year. To reach the Top Ten for new capacity in 2024, countries needed to install at least 5.5 GW of PV systems (compared to 4.2 GW in 2023 and just 1.5 GW back in 2018).

Market segmentation

Both rooftop and utility scale segments grew in 2024, however the utility scale grew much more – especially in China, the USA and India. Data uncertainty in converting utility scale AC capacity to DC capacity in China (and other countries) remains important but unlike 2023, the utility scale market clearly dominated, representing over two-thirds of new capacity: the change can be explained by the fast installation rates in China aimed at absorbing the production. Whilst distributed PV remains the principal driver of growth in some markets (Brazil, Germany, Türkiye, Italy and France for example), the sheer volume that can be installed in individual utility scale systems is leading to this segment outpacing distributed growth around the world. Newer applications such as floating PV and linear PV are more often within the centralised market, whilst agriPV and parking canopies exist across both the centralised and decentralised segments. The increase in deployment of prosumer and selfconsumption remuneration models tends to be limited to smaller capacity systems, with a larger number of unit systems but much lower capacities.

Cumulative installed capacity in the world

In 2024, the global cumulative installed capacity reached 2.25 TW. It took more than 40 years to reach a cumulative capacity of 1.18 TW (in 2022), but just 2 years to double this. China now has nearly 50% of cumulative worldwide capacity. Growth in cumulative capacity remained over 35% — above average for the past 10 years. Within the Top Ten of total cumulative installed capacities, where last year the Chinese cumulative capacity was just over double that of Europe, this year it is triple — the faster growth rates in annual capacity leaving the EU and other countries lagging. There is still a long gap before Japan, who slipping to 5th place and has a slowing market, will be overtaken in cumulative capacity— the next markets would have to improve on this year’s annual volumes over at least 5 years to catch up the more than 40 GW gap.

Evolution of regional share of PV installations

With the predominance of the Chinese market, it is no surprise that Aisa-Pacific leads in regional share. This position has been reinforced because the once-again extremely large Chinese market has grown faster than elsewhere, and other regional shares have gone down proportionally. If we exclude China from the Asia-Pacific market, what remains is roughly equivalent in size to the European and the Americas market, the first two holding 17% and the latter 14% of global cumulative PV installations. Outside of China, major Asia-Pacific’s markets varied widely in dynamics; India (31.9 GW) and Pakistan (17.0 GW) had strong growth whilst Japan, South Korea and Australia either slightly contracted or remained stable. These three countries have been significant contributors to markets in the past, but their combined new capacity is slowly declining towards 10 GW from a high of 18 GW five years ago and their contribution to global cumulative capacity is down to just 2% from 6% in 2020. 

In contrast, India has developed strongly, leaning both on ambitious manufacturing and market support as well as benefiting from low-cost imports. The ability of India to continue with the volumes seen this year will depend both on the local markets’ ability to function with higher cost local manufacturing and on investment in administrative procedures and labour markets. The Pakistani market this year is the result of the convergence of several factors from rising electricity costs, low-cost imports, and a rapidly expanding network of module importers and resellers – the large volume of imported modules in 2023 indicated that 2024 would be dynamic. With an estimated new capacity over 17 GW, real concerns are being raised about the local grids ability to remain stable and the viability of the whole electricity system, that has high legacy capacity costs.

The European regional market lost several percentage points in its share of global capacity but grew as a whole, despite reductions in Spain (due to lower competitivity on the prosumer markets as electricity consumption prices dropped, where annual capacity was down to 7.5 GW for a cumulative capacity of 47.2 GW), as well as Poland, the Netherlands and some Nordic markets. Other markets increased once again, including Germany (16.7 GW for a cumulative capacity of 99.8 GW), Italy, France and Greece. Nearly 20 countries installed more than 1 GW in Europe in 2024. 

The Americas regional market is principally composed of the USA and Brazil, although a number of countries have smaller volumes, either based on the rise of small prosumer systems or, on the contrary, as utility scale systems are installed. With 47.1 GW new capacity, the USA market picked up compared to 2023 (33.9 GW), despite grid connection delays and some material shortages continuing in 2024. The Brazilian market continued to grow, at 14.3 GW for a cumulative capacity of 52.1 GW. 

In the Middle East and Africa, Türkiye was the most dynamic market, adding 4.1 GW to last year’s 4.3 GW for a cumulative capacity of 19.6 GW. The South African market slowed to approximately 1.2 GW but a healthy volume of projects are in the development phases. The rest of the continent saw marginal volumes installed compared to elsewhere, despite the large pipeline of announced projects, many associated with storage or green hydrogen / ammonia. 

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