According to the latest Asia-Pacific and Central Asia report on emerging solar markets released by NPD Solarbuzz, the demand for solar power generation in emerging Asia-Pacific and Central Asia is expected to exceed 3GW by 2017, a very strong growth compared to 723MW in 2012, with a compound annual growth rate of 28 %.

"In the past, solar energy applications in Asia-Pacific and Central Asia were mainly concentrated in solar lighting and residential," said Han Qiming, analyst at NPD Solarbuzz. "But in the future, solar demand will come from the widespread use of large-scale ground-based power plants. By 2017, ground-based installations The volume will account for 64% of the total solar power generation in Asia Pacific and Central Asia.”

Solar power demand in Asia Pacific and Central Asia remains highly fragmented and, similar to other emerging solar markets, has diverse policies and various end-market drivers. Since Southeast Asia is widely regarded as the central hub of the upstream manufacturing of the solar industry, policy makers have a deep understanding of solar power generation, so they also draw on the mature experience of European photovoltaic market policy development in the policy formulation process.

Asia-Pacific and Central Asia's solar demand mainly comes from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan. From 2013 to 2017, the solar demand in these five countries is expected to account for 50% of the total demand.

Thailand is expected to become the largest single market in the region, driven mainly by rapid growth in electricity demand and fiscal pressures to reduce energy imports.

Indonesia has formulated a long-term solar power generation plan, and it is expected to increase the proportion of solar power to 0.3% of energy by 2025, which is about 1GW of new solar demand; with the upcoming implementation of feed-in tariffs, Indonesia will become the second largest in Southeast Asia by 2017. Solar market; Taiwan and South Korea also prioritize solar power generation for renewable energy targets.

Demand for solar energy will increase in more Asia-Pacific and Central Asian countries in the coming years. The Philippines announced more than 500MW of cumulative solar installation projects at the end of 2012, mainly from strong investment from Japan and South Korea; Bangladesh is already the world's largest off-grid solar market, and plans to add one million solar power systems by the end of 2016 installation; Kazakhstan plans to install 77MW of solar power plants in the next few years; Pakistan has also announced that 500MW of solar power will be deployed.

"Although securing sufficient financing for solar power projects remains a challenge, overall solar power demand in Asia-Pacific and Central Asia is expected to account for 5% of the world's total in 2017, reaching 5GW," added Han Qiming.