German FITs for PV to reman unchanged in 2011
Germany's Network Agency announced its estimate for installed capacity in 2011. At around 2,800 megawatts, Germany would fall short of its target of 3,500 megawatts, so there will be no further cuts in feed-in tariffs for PV this year.
Germany has a "growth corridor" for photovoltaics (Renewables International reported). The country has specified an annual target – 3,500 megawatts of newly installed capacity – but that target is not to be seen as a ceiling. Rather, for each additional gigawatts (1,000 megawatts) installed, feed-in tariffs would be slashed by three percent in addition to the already scheduled annual cuts of nine percent (called " degression" in financial terms and often referred to as "stepped reductions" in layman terms).
To allow these adjustments to be made in real time, an agreement was reached to base a forecast for the calendar year as a whole on the figures for installations in the quarter from March to May. Germany's Network Agency announced these figures yesterday, and it turns out that a total of around 700 megawatts was put into operation during those three months, equivalent to "only" 2,800 megawatts when extrapolated for calendar year 2011. There will therefore be no additional cuts in feed-in tariffs on July 1 because Germany is not set to surpass its target.
"With the data now published, we provide all market players with the clarity they need to plan their solar arrays to be connected to the grid after July 1, 2011," explained Matthias Kurth, President of the Network Agency.
In the first five months of the year, a total of around 1,000 megawatts of PV was newly installed as compared to over 1,700 megawatts in the first five months of 2010. But 2010 turned out to be a boom year, with around 7,400 megawatts eventually being installed. Generally, the last quarter of the calendar year is when most PV is installed in Germany as investors race to hook up their systems before the new feed-in tariffs take effect every January 1, so Germany may still surpass its target this year. As the figures from last year show, a total of 5,700 megawatts were installed in the last seven months of the year.
The success of PV in Germany can only be truly appreciated in its global context. Depending on how one counts installations in Italy (Renewables International reported), Germany remains number one by far. In comparison, the US has some 2,200 megawatts of PV installed – in total, not each year. In other words, relatively small Germany is still installing more PV each year than the US has installed in total.
And there are two other salient differences between Germany and the US: first, the US does not actually have a central registry for PV, so there is no sure way of knowing how much grid-connected PV has been installed; and second, when a target is met in the US, in all likelihood the market screeches to a halt because the target is defined as a ceiling. (Craig Morris)
