Norber Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry told Reuters;
“Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity,” Allnoch told Reuters. “Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over.”
The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world’s leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.
Government-mandated support for renewables has helped Germany became a world leader in renewable energy and the country gets about 20 percent of its overall annual electricity from those sources.
Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
Although I am very pleased for Germany and their foresight, at the same time I am sad and disappointed with Australia for being such laggards. We have so much sunshine, so much space for solar PV and concentrated solar that we should be adopting this proven technology in droves.
However our governments continue with procrastination and drop further and further behind in the renewable energy race. Even though Bruce Public thinks that roof-top solar is the best thing since sliced bread, our governments cut feed-in tariffs, slash installation incentives, and cancel major solar projects. Unfortunately, those in power are still married to the coal industry, without any indication of a messy divorce on the horizon!
That said, I feel proud that I have invested in the technology, and so have many like me. Sooner or later there will be a tipping point by the public that will force the powers that be to act, probably sooner with all this scaremongering about the carbon tax! People in my area are installing solar PV in droves. In fact every third house in my street now has it installed on the roof. It certainly is something to behold.