Photovoltaics boom in double digits also in seventh year

June 14, 2023

Source: Energy & Management Powernews

On the occasion of the solar trade fairs in Munich, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) forecasts double-digit growth rates for photovoltaic systems for the seventh consecutive year in 2023.

Germany's demand for solar power systems will grow at a double-digit percentage rate for the seventh year in a row this year, and demand for solar batteries will even grow exponentially for the fifth year, it said. This is the latest forecast of the German Solar Industry Association (BSW). It published it on June 13, the day before the international solar and storage trade fairs Intersolar and EES Europe in Munich. The trade fairs are expecting a record number of visitors, with more than 85,000 trade visitors.

In addition to more and ever larger solar parks, private property owners have been among the most important drivers of the energy turnaround in recent years. Their demand for photovoltaic systems and solar storage had more than tripled between 2022 and 2019. This is according to evaluations of the market master data register of the Federal Network Agency. According to surveys, 77 percent of homeowners can now imagine purchasing a solar system to generate electricity or heat. More than one in five of them are already planning to do so in the next 12 months, according to the results of a You-Gov representative survey commissioned by BSW.

At the end of June, twice as many home storage systems as in the previous year

"Almost all signs continue to point to growth: solar systems are inexpensive, the number of skilled workers is rising, the supply situation is brightening and market barriers are increasingly being dismantled," BSW CEO Carsten Körnig was pleased to report. He sees growth risks in the event that these developments falter and in increased financing costs due to high interest rates.

The latest market figures also point in the direction of growth: in the home segment alone, around 159,000 PV systems were already put into operation in the first quarter of 2023. That was more than twice as many as in the comparable period of the previous year, he said. The number of newly installed solar power storage systems will already exceed the number of batteries installed in 2022 as a whole by the end of June, BSW expects. For balcony power plants in rental apartments, demand even rose in the triple-digit percentage range last year.

PV share of electricity is at 10 percent

The annual solar power harvest of the PV power plant stock installed in this country is now sufficient to cover more than 10 percent of domestic electricity demand in a climate-friendly way, it said. According to resolutions of the traffic light coalition, their share is to increase to more than 25 percent by 2030. The implementation of a PV strategy adopted by German Economics Minister Robert Habeck in May is intended to remove remaining market barriers. In purely mathematical terms, the estimated 800,000 solar home storage systems now installed in Germany could store the daily electricity consumption of all private households in Munich.

In line with the positive developments in home storage, industrial and commercial storage systems are also on the upswing. 3,900 commercial storage units were installed in 2022, 42 percent more than in 2021, bringing the total number of industrial and commercial storage units installed to just over 10,000.


Storage capacity of industrial storage in Germany with over 1,000 MWh Click on the graphic to enlarge
Source: BSW

Author: Susanne Harmsen