A bit of good news in solar for a change.

According Germany's IWR, the country set a world record for the most solar energy production on midday of Friday last week.

The IWR, Germany's renewable energy organization, issued a release that said (translated via Google from the original German) that "under a cloudless sky on Friday at noon" German solar generation reached 22,000 megawatts. That's about half of Germany's peak afternoon load, depending on the time year.

Dr. Norbert Allnoch of the IWR said that there is no other country on earth with solar plants capable of producing over 20,000 megawatts of electricity.  

The cumulative amount of solar installed in the U.S. at the end of 2011 was approximately 4 gigawatts, according to GTM Research.