Control Engineering

Peter Welander

Solar power shining on in Germany?
April 8, 2008

I was a bit shocked when I was reading an article in this week's Economist to discover that the world's largest producer of photovoltaic cells is a German company, Q-CELLS, based in Wolfen in the old eastern sector. Germany is only the third largest producer of such cells in the aggregate (behind China and Japan) but it does have the world's largest installed base of photovoltaic power generation with about 2.5 gigawatts as of 2006.

Germany isn't exactly the sunniest place in the world. (If old Hogan's Heroes episodes are to be believed, it is perpetually winter there.) Nonetheless, it has, relatively speaking, a huge amount of it's power generated by renewal energy sources, (14.2%) more even than the U.S. in total output. It leads in wind generation (20+ gigawatts) and photovoltaics.

Let's be clear though, Germany effectively subsidizes solar energy production through tariff manipulation and consumers ultimately pay for it. This subsidy program is in the process of going away which will likely push the country toward more practical renewable generating approaches, such as more wind power. All those solar panels would be more effective someplace sunnier like Spain or North Africa.

It leaves me trying to figure out what the U.S. leads in, besides energy consumption.

Posted by Peter Welander on April 8, 2008 | Comments (1)