A “second gold rush” for the photovoltaic industry is coming, enabled by the “inevitable” adoption of distributed generation (DG) solar power on a widespread basis. This was the assessment of Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, who chaired a panel on current dynamics in the PV marketplace at the Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco this week.

“We are now in the interesting phase,” Weber said, adding that utility prices for electricity from conventional sources, combined with the improving economics of solar power’s levelized cost of energy (LCOE), are pushing solar into the mainstream.

SolarIndustryMag.com: PV Industry Leaders See A ‘Second Gold Rush’ Coming In The Solar Sector.