See more of his work on The Energy Informative, a site that promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Germany is quickly becoming the first developed country in the world to generate more electricity using solar cells than wind turbines. In 2012, Germany’s solar power increased by more than 7,100 megawatts, which brought their total to 32,000 megawatts – 1,000 MW more than the wind.
Germany has set an ambitious target to produce 35% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Germany’s first half of 2012 was encouraging, with 25,97% of its electricity coming from renewable sources. This is a massive increase over last year’s figure of 20.56.
Solar is still lagging behind wind in terms of the total amount of energy (not power), but if this trend continues, solar will soon take over. Photovoltaics produced 47% more electricity than last year.
Why Germany?
Why is photovoltaic technology booming in Germany when we know the country isn’t blessed with much solar energy?
The falling price of solar panels is responsible for many of the changes in the past couple of years. Solar producers from China were not expected to be able to drop their prices so fast. Because of this, so many solar companies have been forced to close or go bankrupt in recent years.
Germany, in addition to the industry’s trend toward lower prices, has created excellent financial incentives to encourage solar growth. In 1991, a feed-in tariff system (similar to but better than Net Metering ) had been introduced. The FIT scheme requires power utilities to purchase electricity from renewable energy providers at a fixed rate for 20 years. This creates a stable environment for investors, including banks and homeowners.