Jefferies: Grid parity a reality in Germany

Share

As installed photovoltaic capacity is forecast to reach 5.2 gigawatts (GW) for 2011, feed-in tariffs (FIT) will fall by 15 percent. As such, Jefferies calculates, tariffs for photovoltaic systems will be between 17.94 euro cents and 24.42 euro cents per kilowatt hour. Which is quite a different proposition for the industry, as that will be equal or below the retail price for electricity in Germany.

Germany pays some of the highest electricity tariffs in Europe. In the most recent Household Energy Price Index for Europe (HEPI), released on September 29, Berlin is listed the second most expensive city for electricity in Europe with charges of 25.11 euro cents per kilowatt hour, second only to Copenhagen with 30.46 euro cents.

With the feed-in tariff equal to electricity tariff, Jefferies analyst Gerard Reid told pv magazine that photovoltaic installers will have to be ready to adjust their mindset from being FIT generators to electricity generators.

He also concluded that it is inevitable that systems costs in Germany decline to below those levels. "As an investor people have been waiting for grid parity for about six or seven years, and now it’s here."

"You can use the electricity yourself and you’ve got another marketing element, it’s more complicated but it’s another element," continued Reid.

Jefferies forecasts that Germany will install 3.5 GW of photovoltaic capacity in the years to come. Or as the Jefferies release concludes quite simply: "solar is not dead!"

Popular content

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.