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Comments     Threshold


RE: Interesting
By Paj on 10/18/2012 9:15:20 AM , Rating: 1
Then reality hit. Homeowners in many places decided the return, or the cost of tying up the capital, didnt seem worth it. Governments realized, particularly in Europe, that money didnt grow on trees, so subsidies were cut or not expanded as hoped. Suddenly, there's tons of capacity, and nobody that wants it.

You couldnt be more wrong. Germany's solar capacity has quadrupled from 6GW in 2008 to 25 GW in 2011 - over half the world's solar capacity. The effect of this is that the wholesale price of energy during the day (ie when the sun is shining) has dropped dramatically - by up to 40 percent in some cases.

It's aim is to have 52GW of capacity installed by 2020. It only needs to add 3GW per year to achieve this, which is half the rate it is at currently.

Even now, utility companies there are cutting their feed in tariffs as they are starting to lose money - but this hasn't dampened demand there at all. It's true that some companies have closed, but this just serves to make the existing companies more cost conscious, and adopt better working models.

Solar is approaching grid parity, even without subsidies. Germany's solar expertise continues to grow, to the point where it will start exporting its know-how overseas. There is a huge opportunity for US and Chinese companies to get involved.

RE: Interesting
I get the impression that he was writing about manufacturing capacity.


Simple supply and demand.


RE: Interesting
By Ringold on 10/18/2012 5:09:07 PM , Rating: 1
Like the other guy said, I was referring to manufacturing capacity, since the article is all about manufacturers, not power utilities.

Germany is also one of the worlds very few bright spots. Germany didn't go hog-wild and jump on the spend-now, pay-never socialist pandering model southern Europe did, so Germany can afford to waste money on solar.

And Germany's a nation I'd never bring up as being intelligent on energy policy; they're working to make their country permanently nuclear-power free, and they've long been strangely comfortable with their Russian oil and natural gas overlords. Germany's also, in the grand sweep of the world, squarely a 'mediocre' at best location for capturing sunlight.

