California-based NEXTracker held its lead over the PV tracker industry last year, claiming 30% of the global market in terms of shipments. New Mexico-headquartered Array Technologies also maintained its second-place position last year, accounting for roughly 12% of global deliveries.
“The new solar PV tracker leaderboard confirms the ongoing dominance of NEXTracker, which has more than twice the market share of its closest competitors globally,” Wood Mackenzie said in its recent report, Global Solar PV Tracker Market Shares and Shipment Trends, 2019. “The tier under NEXTracker is crowded with ambitious tracker companies that currently rival each other in size, give or take a few percentage points.”
However, PV Hardware raced up the rankings last year, ousting its fellow Spanish rival Soltec from third place to claim about 9% of the global market for solar trackers. China’s Arctech Solar took fourth place with roughly 9% of global shipments, while Murcia-based Soltec fell two spots in 2018 to close out the top five, with a share of approximately 8% of the global market for PV trackers by total shipments.
The United States and Latin America were the biggest geographical markets for tracker technology last year, Wood Mackenzie said. Roughly 5.85 GW of PV trackers were shipped throughout Latin America alone in 2018, followed closely by the U.S. market. However, the world’s top growth markets for solar trackers in 2018 were the Middle East, which expanded by 96% in 2018, and Australia, where annual shipments jumped by 74%.
“PV trackers continue to be the fastest growing of all racking segments, and is expected to continue on an upward trajectory as the global solar market surpasses 100 GW by the end of 2019,” Wood Mackenzie said.
The top five suppliers in Wood Mackenzie’s annual rankings all signed major supply agreements in 2018. NEXTracker, for example, secured a deal in November to provide NX Horizon solar trackers for a 255 MW solar project in New South Wales, Australia. And last May, Array Technologies revealed a three-year, multi-gigawatt tracker tie-up with U.S. solar developer sPower.
In January 2018, Arctech Solar started installing its trackers at a 10 MW PV array in Khafji, Saudi Arabia. And in October, Soltec started installing its trackers at an 84.7 MW solar project in Spain.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
The same report finds Soltec #3 in cumulative tracker shipments through 2018. In 2017, Soltec entered the GW+ per year club of three with singular value propositions and architecture amongst the three. Now with seven in the 2018 club, one may notice that Soltec singularity is less pronounced, and recognize the proof of innovative tracker concepts finding traction in a market that is maturing in best practices.