Germanys Solar Power Program The critics are wrong. What the feed in tariff has done is exactly what it was supposed to do: boost installations of renewable power sources and, over time, lower their costs. In fact, it has been so successful that last year Germany added more than twice the new solar capacity that the government anticipated. As a consequence of that and utility company pressure, the feed in tariff is being sharply cut to reduce the number of new installations in 2012. But, at least one industry official believes Germany will add even more solar installations this year than last. Thats in part because companies want to beat the deadline for when the tariff will drop. But its also because production costs of solar systems, skewed in part by cheap Chinese modules, have plunged faster than the cuts in the tariff. Meanwhile, because distributed solar is now providing a large fraction of Germanys power in the peak hours when it is most needed, the wholesale price of electricity has fallen. That worries fossil-fuel generators. The bulk of their profit margin comes in those peak hours. Deutsche Bank solar analyst Vishal Shah said in a report in February that solar installations were cutting peak electricity prices by up to 40 percent. Thus, the pressure from utilities on the government to cut back the feed-in-tariff is enormous. dailykos/story/2012/06/12/1099511/-Germany-s-solar-installations-generate-10-of-the-nation-s-electricity-in-May-This-is-a-failure#
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 05:20:02 +0000
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