Chinese multinational technology firm Huawei has released its predictions within the renewable energy and solar PV market through 2025.
Renewable energy will take a more prominent role as a chief source of energy for main grids over the next five to ten years, according to Huawei.

However, ensuring safety, reliability, and cost-effectiveness across power generation assets will become the utmost priority for grid operators.

The top ten trends within the solar PV market through 2025 include:

Digitisation – More than 90% of global solar PV plants will be digitized
The rapid development of digital technologies such as 5G and the cloud will improve the intelligence and efficiency of solar systems.

Artificial intelligence – Over 70% of solar PV plants will apply AI techniques
AI solutions will enable proactive identification and protection of PV modules and device faults, self-learning for higher yields and automatic optimization of PV-storage plant revenue.

More than 80% of the work in PV assets will be unmanned
Drone inspection and robot-based automatic operations and maintenance will handle dangerous and repetitive work that requires a continual high degree of accuracy, for enhanced productivity and safety in PV plants.

Proactive support for main grids – PV assets will shift from grid-adapting to grid-supporting
Solar + storage – The number of integrated systems will exceed 30% of total installations
Virtual power plants – More than 80% of residential systems will connect to virtual networks
ICT technologies such as 5G, blockchain and cloud services will enable the formation of VPPs for collaborative management, and participating in the scheduling, transaction, and auxiliary services for power systems.

Arc-fault circuit interrupters (AFCI) will become a must-have feature in distributed solar systems and will be incorporated into international industry standards
High power density – Inverter power density will increase by more than 50%
With breakthroughs in the research of wide-bandgap semiconductors, such as SiC and GaN, as well as advanced control algorithms, inverter power density is expected to increase by more than 50% in the next 5 years.

Modular designs – Core components such as inverters, PCS and energy storage will adopt modular design
Modular design will become mainstream, as it enables flexible deployment, smooth expansion, and expert-free maintenance, greatly reducing O&M costs and improving system availability.

Security and trustworthiness – Security and trustworthiness has become a necessary requirement for solar PV systems