Heil Solar

Germany is the world leader in installed solar power, just ahead of Japan. And the Germans are installing solar way faster than anyone else in the world on a per capita basis. The full figures are at the end of this story.

Germany has 200 times as much solar energy as Britain. It generates 12% of its electricity from various renewables, compared with 4.6% in Britain and 2% in the United States. It has created a quarter of a million jobs in renewables - a number that is growing fast. Britain has only 25,000, a number that represents the amount of jobs created in the industry in Germany in the past year alone.

Freiburg, a town of 200,000 people in the Black Forest, has almost as much solar photovoltaic (PV) power as the whole of Britain. Dr Dieter Worner, director of Freiburg’s environmental protection agency, admits that such is the competition among German towns that Ulm has just overtaken Freiburg as solar capital of the world.

“But we are still expanding rapidly. It’s a sporting contest,” he says. Indeed, by the time Britain starts its first eco-town in 2016, Germany will have 50 or 60 eco-cities. Small wonder that the Labour government has quietly dropped the pledge it made six years ago to catch up with Germany by 2010. In Germany, too, the higher production has pushed prices down sharply. A typical 3kw PV system costs about $35,000 in Britain but less than $20,000 in Germany. Dr Worner says prices have halved in the past seven years and will do so again in the next seven.

The secret of German success is the “feed-in tariff” (FIT). Anyone generating electricity from solar PV, wind or hydro gets a guaranteed payment of four times the market rate - currently about 35p pence a unit - for 20 years.

on Heiner Gärtner’s 200-acre farm (pictured), the fields are covered with 10,050 solar panels. The ambient hum in the air is not the sound of insects but of transformers carrying a high-voltage current to the villages nearby.

“We’ve had so much sun,” Mr. Gärtner, 34, told the New York Times earlier this year — vindicating his decision in 2003 to turn this 150-year-old pig farm into a small-scale electricity plant. “I couldn’t repair the roof if I only bred pigs,” said Mr. Gärtner. “We have to compete worldwide these days. Pork from Brazil costs half as much as German pork. Our costs are simply too high.”

Total Installed PV Power by the End of 2005

Cumulative PV Capacity (kW)

Country Off-Grid PV Grid-Tied Total

Germany 1,400,000 29,000 1,429,000
Japan 1,420,760 1,148 1,421,908
United States 379,000 100,000 479,000
Spain 41,600 15,800 57,400
Netherlands 45,857 4,919 50,776
Australia 41,813 8,768 50,581
France 19,199 13,844 33,043
Italy 22,200 5,300 27,500
Switzerland 24,120 2,930 27,050
Austria 21,126 2,895 24,021
Mexico 4,218 14,476 18,694
Canada 10,843 5,903 16,746
Korea 14,168 853 15,021
United Kingdom 10,650 227 10,877
Norway 452 6,800 7,252
Sweden 887 3,350 4,237
Denmark 2,580 70 2,650
Estimated Total 3,494,524 202,276 3,696,800

Installed in 2005 (kW) Total per
capita
Country Total Grid-Tied [kW/Capita]

Germany 635,000 632,000 17.32
Japan 289,917 287,105 11.13
United States 103,000 70,000 1.62
Spain 20,400 18,600 1.32
Netherlands 1,697 1,547 3.12
Australia 8,280 1,980 2.97
France 7,020 5,900 0.54
Italy 6,800 6,500 0.64
Switzerland 3,950 3,800 3.66
Austria 2,961 2,711 2.93
Mexico 513 30 0.17
Canada 2,862 612 0.52
Korea 6,487 6,183 0.31
United Kingdom 2,732 2,567 0.18
Norway 362 0 1.58
Sweden 371 0 0.47
Denmark 360 320 0.49
Estimated Total 1,092,851 1,039,917

Source: International Energy Agency, www.iea-pvps.org