Germany is known for is beer and superb engineering but now they can add another feather to their cap, as they are the first country to have more than 50% of their power generated from solar.
New data from the Fraunhofer ISE research institute showed that German solar panels generated a record 24.24 GW of electricity between 1pm and 2pm on Friday, June 6th. And on Monday June 9th, a public holiday, solar power production peaked at 23.1 GW, which was 50.6 percent of total electricity demand.
Germany has had success with solar by encouraging citizens to install panels on their roof tops, rather than focussing on building large-scale solar farms. In fact, 90 percent of Germany’s solar panels are on individuals’ roofs.
This strategy should be taken on board by all countries as we move to greener sources of energy, especially in Australia where sunlight is abundant. To give you an idea of how badly we a languishing behind Germany, Australia only Generated 1.1% of its energy from solar.
We need more incentives in Australia and allow people to put larger solar plants on their homes whilst still being connected to the grid. Limiting the size of people’s solar plants is ridiculous as the more we can produce the better and if you are worried about people selling too much back into the grid limit the amount they can sell not the size of their system. (Within the capabilities of the wires to accept the extra load of course)
The next step here is to invest heavily in power storage, possibly with Graphene if we can crack that gene in a bottle. Hats off to Germany for leading the world again
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
