November 2, 2009, 09:52 (CET)
German market exploding to around 2.4 GigaWatt in 2009
The German "Bundesnetzagentur" has officially registered 1.471 MegaWatt of new grid connected PV systems from January to September 2009. Since January 2009 all new installations are registered.
After a slow start in Q1 the power of new installations now exceeds 300 Megawatt per month. Several major module manufacturers earlier indicated their "sold out" status for 2009. It can be expected that during the last quarter of this year at least another 300 MW will be installed per month. This all means that Germany is on its way to a record 2.4 Gigawatt of new installations for 2009, close to the record of Spain in 2008. This means a 60% growth in 2009 compared to 2008. As indicated in the law, the feed-in tariff in 2010 will be reduced 9-11% in case new installations will exceed 1.5 GW this year. But with the recently installed right-wing government, many people fear a further reduction of the feed-in tariff leading to a run on PV till the end of this year.
Like the dramatic low newly installed PV power in the first 3 month of 2009, it can be expected that Q1 in Germany in 2010 will also be very low.
