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

In the past, solar applications in the Asia Pacific and Central Asia regions were mainly concentrated in solar lighting and residential areas, "said Han Qiming, an analyst at NPD Solarbuzz." However, in the future, solar demand will come from the widespread use of large ground power plants. By 2017, the number of ground mounted installations will account for 64% of the total solar power generation in the Asia Pacific and Central Asia region

The demand for solar power generation in the Asia Pacific and Central Asia regions is still highly dispersed and similar to other emerging solar markets, with diverse policies and various terminal market drivers. Due to the fact that Southeast Asia is widely regarded as the hub of upstream manufacturing in the solar energy industry, policy makers have a deeper understanding of solar power generation. Therefore, in the process of policy formulation, they have also borrowed mature experience from the development of European photovoltaic market policies.

The demand for solar energy in the Asia Pacific and Central Asia region mainly comes from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan, China, China. From 2013 to 2017, it is expected that the solar energy demand of these five countries will account for 50% of the total demand.

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

Indonesia has formulated a long-term solar power generation plan, which is expected to increase the energy proportion of solar power generation to 0.3% by 2025, approximately 1GW of new solar demand; By 2017, Indonesia will become the second largest solar energy market in Southeast Asia, thanks to the upcoming implementation of grid electricity prices; Taiwan, China, China and South Korea also list solar power as the priority of renewable energy.

In the coming years, more countries in the Asia Pacific and Central Asia regions will increase their demand for solar energy. At the end of 2012, the Philippines announced solar cumulative installation projects with a capacity of over 500MW, mainly from strong investments from Japan and South Korea; Bangladesh is already the world's largest off grid solar market and plans to install one million new solar power generation systems by the end of 2016; Kazakhstan plans to install 77MW solar power plants in the next few years; Pakistan has also announced the deployment of 500MW of solar power.

Although ensuring sufficient financing for solar power generation projects remains a challenge, the overall demand for solar power generation in Asia Pacific and Central Asia is expected to account for 5% of the global total by 2017, reaching 5GW, "Han Qiming added.