Germany Added 1 GW of PV in September, 6 GW So Far in 2012

Germany remains the solar savior nation, despite efforts to ratchet down its feed-in tariff.

Eric Wesoff November 05, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Germany installed September 980 megawatts of solar photovoltaics in September, up from 329 megawatts in August. That brings Germany's total PV installations to 6.22 gigawatts in 2012 so far.

This data comes from The German Federal Network Agency, The Bundesnetzagentur (or BNetzA).

According to Germany Energy Blog reporting on Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the optimum annual PV deployment in Germany is between 2.5 gigawatts and 3.5 gigawatts. Exceeding that range results in a decrease in feed-in tariffs for new installations by 2.5 percent per month.

Germany has more than 30 gigawatts of cumulative installed solar. A recent GTM Stat of-the-Day showed that Germany installs PV on solar rooftops ten times faster than the U.S. (Compare this to U.S. totals from the recently released U.S. Solar Market Insight totals from GTM Research.)

Solar installations in the U.S. will total 3.2 gigawatts in 2012. That's a healthy 71 percent growth rate. "But the next couple of years are hard to call," according to Shayle Kann, VP of Research.

"We have a more sober assessment of 2013," said Kann, who sees close to 4 gigawatts in the coming year, but like everyone in the solar industry, is waiting to see the impact of the ITC grant sunset. The upside is that "it's hard to imagine a down year for 2013."