Photovoltaics: number of systems grows by almost 30 percent
3.4 million PV systems were installed in Germany in April, 30 percent more than in the previous year. Not including balcony power plants.
Photovoltaics at Bremen's Weser Stadium
(Image: heise online / anw)
A good 3.4 million photovoltaic systems with a total rated output of around 81,500 megawatts (MW) were installed on German roofs and properties in April of this year. This represents a 29.8% increase in the number of systems compared to April 2023 and a 20.5% increase in installed capacity, according to the Federal Statistical Office. In April 2023, there were almost 2.7 million PV systems with a total rated output of around 67,600 megawatts.
The Federal Office records all PV systems that feed into the public grid and have an electricity meter that measures the amount of electricity fed in. Smaller systems such as balcony power plants are therefore generally not included. According to the Federal Network Agency, 220,000 of these units with a gross output of 200 MW were registered between January and June 2024.
In 2023, PV systems (excluding balcony power plants) fed around 53.6 million megawatt hours of electricity into the grid in Germany, 11.9% of the total electricity fed in. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this is a new record. In 2022, photovoltaics accounted for 10.6% of the total electricity fed into the grid. The record month for solar power in Germany to date was June 2023: At just over 8.5 million megawatt hours, 27.3 percent of the electricity fed into the grid was generated by PV installations.
Income from solar power
In 2022, around 1.8 million or 4.7 percent of private households in Germany received money from the sale of solar power – In 2015, this figure was 3.1 percent or 1.2 million households. They earned an average of 183 euros per month, compared to 266 euros in 2015. One possible reason for this decline may be the reduction in feed-in tariffs for newly installed PV systems under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
Imports of photovoltaic systems fell sharply in the first five months of this year: The value of imported solar cells and solar modules fell by 66 percent compared to the same period last year to just under 605 million euros. The value of exported photovoltaic systems also fell by 65% in this period, from just under 616 million euros to just over 216 million euros.
In 2023, photovoltaic systems worth just under 3.6 billion euros were imported to Germany. Compared to the previous year, the value had already fallen by 12.5%. 86.4% of PV systems imported to Germany in 2023 came from China. This was followed at a distance by the Netherlands with 5.4 percent and Vietnam with 2.6 percent.
PV systems worth a good €1.1 billion were exported last year - 23.5% less than the year before. Most of these went to European countries. The most important customers in 2023 were Austria (17.8%), Italy (11.4%) and Switzerland (9%).
Production of solar modules declining in 2023
The production of solar modules for PV systems also fell significantly in Germany in the first quarter of 2024: compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the number of solar modules produced fell by 52.8% to just under 495,600 units. The decline in production of solar collectors, which convert solar energy into heat, was even greater than for solar modules. While just under 64,800 solar collectors were produced in the first quarter of 2023, the figure for January to March 2024 was around 21,300. This corresponds to a decline of 67.1%.
The production of solar panels in Germany already declined last year. In 2023, a good 3.4 million solar modules were produced for sale. This was 12.8% less than in the previous year. In 2022, just under 4.0 million such modules were produced. A stronger decline is also evident here for solar collectors: In 2023, just under 192,000 units were produced in Germany, more than a quarter (28.4 percent) less than a year earlier (268,100).
(anw)