Solar power has sunny prospects

Almost all forecasters paint a gloomy picture for sales of solar panels and associated hardware this year. But in the medium and long term, solar energy's prospects are as bright as the sun.

The three main factors making solar energy's future bright are the explosive growth in electric car sales, sharp drop in battery costs and switch from centralized generation to distributed generation in many countries' power grids.

As the world's top producer of electric cars and solar power equipment China is likely to become the world's leader in this power revolution. Sales of new-energy vehicles (all-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell) have been increasing more than 50 percent a year since 2010, and the growth shows no sign of slowing down. In China alone (the world's leading market), 517,000 new-energy vehicles were sold last year - more than the figure for the entire world in 2014. And the Chinese government hopes to boost this figure to 2 million by 2020, while Bloomberg New Energy Finance sees electric vehicle sales hitting 41 million (35 percent of the total) by 2040.