“In December alone, Germany installed nearly as much solar capacity as the United States has in total, fueled by the subsidies that solar companies admit sometimes made it possible not to worry whether there was sufficient demand in a given area for the power they would produce.”
The Washington Post reports:
… “Everybody knows we can’t go the way we’ve been going,” said Miranda Schreurs, the director of the Environmental Policy Research Center at the Free University of Berlin and a government adviser. “It’ll break the bank.”
The subsidies for renewable energy cost German consumers about $14 a month for a family of four. Companies that generate renewable energy get a guaranteed above-market rate for 20 years. In Schlicht’s case, the owner of the building will get a cut of the proceeds in exchange for giving over part of the roof to Geosol.
Though solar energy supplied 3.1 percent of Germany’s electricity needs in 2011 — hampered in part by the country’s famously dreary weather — the industry consumed closer to half of the overall renewable subsidies, which also support other energy sources such as wind and biomass…
It will be interesting to see how many of those panels are producing any power at all in 5 or 10 years. In the mean time they are destabilizing not only their own electric grid, but those of neighboring countries. The Germans are smart, but sometimes they just all seem to go crazy charlie and follow some extreme group right off the proverbial cliff.