Solar PV crosses two symbolic milestones in UK and Germany

Renewables International

Solar has trickled across the 40 GW threshold in Germany, while the UK now has 10 GW, according to data just published in each country. But both markets are slowing down.

Germany’s Network Agency has announced (in German) that just over 100 MW of new arrays added in May, bringing the total up to 40.09 GW. Nonetheless, growth is slow. In the first five months of 2016, Germany only added 394 MW, compared to 518 MW in the same timeframe from the previous year – which itself fell roughly 40% below the target of 2.5 GW.

Interestingly, only 12.39 MW of the amount added in May was ground-mounted, and probably all of that was under auctions, not FITs. We thus still await the completion of a large amount of PV from auctions more than a year after the first round. Because so little has been installed, solar FITs will remain unchanged.

In similar new, the UK had 10.3 GW of PV at the end of May, according to official statistics, which are still preliminary, however. The country still has a goal of 22 GW of PV by 2020, which would require the installation of more than 2 GW annually from now until then. The UK is thus likely to remain the biggest PV market in Europe for the foreseeable future as Germany drops to 1-2 GW annually (the higher figure once the auctioned volumes are built).

However, that goal is now in question in the UK, with some industry experts saying only 13 GW will be built by the end of the decade. The market faces reduced policy support.

Source: Renewables International. Reproduced with permission.