World Solar PV markets rising growth to be the backdrop of the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT 2012

This will be the economic backdrop to the 2012 edition of the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT - Roadmap to Grid Parity, to be held in Verona, Italy on 7-8 May 2012. As in the past, this leading international conference on solar PV has been scheduled for the two days preceding the 13th edition of Solarexpo, the international exhibition and conference.

The ITALIAN PV SUMMIT has cemented its position as one of the most important conference dates for the solar PV industry at an international level: the third edition last year featured 50 speakers, saw 10 working sessions and drew 400 participants from 19 different countries. The event provides a meeting point for the community of solar sector professionals, gathering alongside the CEOs of leading global and Italian companies, finance, top international analysts and institutional representatives. The summit offers profound insights into the future of the solar sector, carefully analysing market trends and the many variables in play in order to provide industry players with practical, real-world business intelligence.

This year the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT will again respond to the global solar industry’s most pressing issues such as:



1. Italy as the world’s biggest PV market, following a record year for installations in 2011, and a
front-line country for reaching grid parity in the period 2013-2016: convergence among analysts
and the cost roadmaps of global PV players



2. Domestic content clauses to protect national production, state aid files and dumping files: the
hottest issues in the fierce competitive challenge between Europe, America and Asia



3. M&A, partnerships, transition from manufacturing to system integration: current trends in the
consolidation of the international PV industry time-to-market of the biggest emerging markets.


Luca Zingale, scientific director of the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT, commented: “Clouds will continue to hang over the sector in coming months, in particular as a result of further weakness in Italian manufacturing, which suffers from its small scale. But the medium-term outlook for solar remains intact with the prospect of even more explosive growth, driven by the achievement of grid parity – where Italy represents a test bed market – and thus the definitive arrival of competitiveness for PV technology, even without incentives. At this point, we’ll also finally see internal Chinese demand take off, a development that may alleviate the competitive pressure that Asian producers are exerting on those in the west.”

The second day of the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT will turn the spotlight on critical Italian topics such as:



1. Laying the basis for further growth in the domestic market: the commitment of individual regions towards
European Union targets (“burden sharing”), streamlining local permitting and network access processes,and
energy storage for the stability of the electricity system



2. The impact of massive solar generation on the electricity market price: is it possible to counterbalance
the cost of incentives?



3. Financing climate for PV amid risks of an extended credit crunch: bank deleveraging, the secondary
market for PV plants, financing requirements of new business models old and new competitive challenges
for the Italian PV industry: efficient production scale, downstream integration, internationalisation.




“The ITALIAN PV SUMMIT continues to offer the PV business community a guide for those seeking to navigate a market that is surely limitless but also contains stormy areas,” concluded Luca Zingale. “As evidenced by past editions, the ITALIAN PV SUMMIT has foreseen the trends in the market and industry over the past years.”

Leading Italian companies including Solsonica, Fimer and Aros have already confirmed their sponsorship of the event