Recent developments in the German photovoltaic sector

Purpose – The world is undergoing a dramatic shift in climate conditions. A heated debate is on-going over what measures to take in order to overcome the global-warming-related temperature increase, now more than 2 degrees centrigrade. The article tries to evaluate the contribution of the feed-in tariff (FIT) and the price of components for solar plants to the accumulation of new solar capacities in Germany, with the aim of determining the reasons for a drastic decline in the new capacities, observed since 2012. Methodology – An autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is used with the new PV Capacities as a dependent variable and component prices and feed-in-tariffs as independent variables. Data from German Federal Network Agency is used. Findings – The statistical analysis shows a significant effect of component prices (in EUR per watt) and the value of the FIT (in EUR) on the New PV Capacities. As Germany has not reached the postulated yearly increase rate of New PV Capacities of 2500 MW since 2014 (EEG, 2017), new approaches are necessary to overcome this situation