Germany

Briefing on the German PV market

Earlier this year, EPIA published the Global Market Outlook for Photovoltaics until 2014, in which we projected between 5 and 7 GW of newly installed PV in Germany in 2010. Updated with new figures from the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), it is most likely that even more than 7 GW will be installed this year.

The graph below gives an overview of the monthly installed PV capacity in Germany from January 2009 until September 2010.

In 2009, a total of 3.8 GW of PV capacity has been installed.  After a slow start in 2009, due to the financial crisis, the market took up again with figures rising above 300MW from July 2009 onwards. System prices dropped severely, with around 10 % during the first and second quarters of 2009 which triggered growing demand during the third and fourth quarters. In December 2009, the number of installations surged because of the expected cut in January 2010 (the cut was 9 % for residential and commercial segments and 11% for industrial and utility-scale applications).

During the first five months of 2010, the monthly market rose from about 225 MW in January to almost the double in May. Because of the expected cut in the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) in July 2010, the number of new installations rose to more than 2 GW in June. Afterwards, the market cooled off again and it reached 360 MW in August. In September, almost 500 MW of PV capacity was connected; a small increase in anticipation to a smaller cut (only 3%) in the FiT in October.