European solar platform Otovo forecasts: Solar prices are coming down again this spring and summer

Otovo, Europe's leading marketplace for residential solar and battery installations, today published its financial results for the first quarter of 2023. The report included data on solar installation costs and shows that both the cost of panels and labour are coming down in 2023 and could hit multi-year lows this summer.

After a challenging 2022, with the Ukraine-Russia war and its energy crisis causing a bump up in prices for solar hardware and installation labour, there is now positive news for homeowners who are considering investing in solar panels and battery installations in their homes: Solar installation prices are expected to come down.

– I have been closely monitoring the trends in the solar industry for many years. This spring we could see the most affordable residential solar in two years. This is great news for the renewable energy industry and for the people who want to contribute to a sustainable future, says Andreas Thorsheim, founder and CEO of Otovo Solar, the solar energy platform where several hundred European installer companies price their equipment and labour every week.

For solar energy, steep price declines is the norm. From 2000 to 2021, the prices for solar modules fell fallen by about 90 percent. From 2015 to 2020 alone, solar module prices fell by 45 percent.

The overall positive long term trend was interrupted in 2022. When energy prices shot up in the autumn of 2021, demand quickly outgrew supply. By January 2022 every single pair of hands in the solar installation business was booked for months ahead. Labour prices in the industry shot up. By April of the same year, pretty much every European warehouse was emptied of modules and inverters. Equipment prices quickly followed the installer labour’s upward trend.

But this winter the situation changed.

– I am happy to say that we are now returning to a downward trend, and we expect the cost of solar installations to come down abruptly in the middle of 2023. says Thorsheim.

Moreover, the electricity prices consumers now face are substantially higher than last time solar installations were this affordable, meaning that payback times could hit record lows in many places as soon as in May or June this year.

For more information about the Q1 results, please visit https://investor.otovo.com/rep...