Germany Added 211 MW Of Solar PV In February

April 3rd, 2013 by James Ayre

211 MW of new solar photovoltaic capacity were installed in Germany in February. The new capacity was spread out amongst more than 8,300 different systems, the largest of which was a new solar park in Brandenburg with a total capacity of 8.2 MW.

The exact figures, released by the German Federal Network Agency, are 211.215 MW of new installed capacity, across 8,375 systems. The new capacity includes more than 23 solar parks over 1 MW in size.

PV Magazine adds some commentary on Germany’s feed-in tariffs:

Photovoltaic feed-in tariffs declined in April to between €0.1101/kWh and €0.1592/kWh, depending on the system size. A year ago, FITs were reduced to €0.1350/kWh for solar farms and rooftop installations between 1 and 10 MW in size. Meanwhile, for smaller rooftop systems, tariffs were lowered to between €0.1650 to €0.1959/kWh.

Now, the Federal Network Agency must decide on the next round of photovoltaic tariffs, for the next 3 months, by the end of April. To calculate the new rates, the agency must multiply by 4 the capacity additions from the last 3 months.

The data for January, released by the Federal Network Agency last month, stated that 274.67 MW of new capacity were installed across 9,300 systems during that month. So, when combined with February’s installations, a total of 485 MW of new capacity were installed in the first two months of 2013. So, in order for tariffs to fall by more than 1% during the next round, March would have had to have seen the installation of at least 400 MW of new capacity.

Image Credit: Windwärts Energie GmbH (some rights reserved)

Don't forget to follow Solar Love on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and/or RSS!! Do it for the sun.

Tags: feed in tariffs, germany, Germany feed in tariff

About the Author

James Ayre 's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy. You can follow his work on Google+.