Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Solar-panel installations in Germany, the world’s largest market in 2009, may expand again next year after almost doubling capacity this year, Phoenix Solar AG Chief Executive Officer Andreas Haenel said.
If solar panel manufacturers are able to cut prices at the same pace as reductions in the government-mandated tariffs for solar electricity generation, then demand may expand at a similar pace as 2010, Haenel said in an interview. Phoenix Solar sells and builds solar plants.
The German solar panel market could be as large as 7,000 megawatts this year, Haenel estimated. That would almost double the amount of solar power capacity. Growth is being supported by a so-called feed-in tariff that guarantees a fixed price for electricity generated by panels for 20 years.
“If manufacturers have learned their lessons from 2009, 2011 shouldn’t be a problem,” Haenel said.
Limits on the supply of equipment such as inverters, which convert direct current from the solar panels to alternating current for use in power lines, is “slowly easing” as manufacturers catch up with demand, Haenel said.
Federal lawmakers in Germany earlier this year passed a law that reduces consumer-paid subsidies for producers of solar power earned by operators including Sulzemoos-based Phoenix Solar and SAG Solarstrom AG. Germany, with more than 8,000 megawatts of photovoltaic panels currently producing power, accounted for about half of global panel sales in 2009, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
France to U.S.
Markets that will increase demand or achieve a total of 1,000 megawatts newly installed capacity in the coming years include France, Italy, Japan and the U.S., Haenel said. A market of 1,000 megawatts, or 1 gigawatt, is an “important milestone,” he said.
Germany already generates as much as 10 percent of its total electricity demand from the sun on some days, Haenel said. In Bavaria, the southernmost state, solar power contributes as much as 25 percent of total electricity when the sun shines and demand is low, he said.
