Solar energy is currently booming. Especially Germany is putting a lot of effort in it and about 5% (28,000 GWh) of all electricity consumption in Germany were produced by Solar energy panels in 2012. All renewable energies (Wind Energy, hydropower, biomass and solar energy) are responsible for 25.8 % of all power usage. On a sunny day the complete amount of electricity power caused by solar energy can be from 30% – 40%.
Thats why the German government decided to support financially every new builded photovoltaic installation. The plan is to build and research new photovoltaic cells/installations until it reaches the capacity of 52,000 megawatts (currently 32,400 megawatts are currently available). This led to a huge boom for photovoltaic cell manufacturers and people started to invest in this renewable energy. This was the beginning of a disaster for German Engineers and the German Solar Industry.
A household in Germany gets money for installing Solar energy panels on their roof. The amount of money depends on square meters, the direction the roof is pointing at and the angle of the roof. It didn’t matter from where to buy the technologies and the people bought for really cheap prices the required equipment in China. China began to dump the prices to be as cheap as possible and all the financially support went in Chinese export products. Big German companies like SIEMENS lost a lot of money. After dumping the prices more and more the EU intervened and tried to regulate the import of Chinese photovoltaic techniques. The prices per kilowatt hour increased up to 0.4 € (0.53 $) which was way too much.
Now that the EU regulates the import and China has to sell their products on the European market for a predefined price the prices for all imports. As a result of the boom and failure Germany made new rules for getting financially support and it is getting better now. The price per kilowatt hour dropped 0.10 € (0.13 $) and is cheaper as an kilowatt hour from an atom power plant. The rumours are about a “Solarboom 2.0”.