Solar Insights: why solar will win the energy wars

By Giles Parkinson on 4 June 2012

Below are a series of graphics that will be presented at the Australian-German solar forum in Berlin this week by Dr Martin Green, the solar cell pioneer and head of the school of photovoltaics at the UNSW, and Dr Bruno Burger from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Frieburg.If you want to get a glimpse of how the energy profiles of many major economies will evolve in coming years, then the energy production data from Germany for the month of May is not a bad place to start.

The first is the most dramatic. It illustrates the growing impact of renewables on the German electricity grid in the month of May just past. It is based on actual production data supplied by the local market. Although much was made by the record 20GW of capacity from solar PV on Friday, May 26, and the 22GW set the next day, the graph makes clear that solar was a major contributor for the entire month.

Germany, of course, has more PV (27GW) installed than the rest of the world combined. Dr Green, however, thinks that this graph will soon be repeated in many other energy markets as solar PV continues its rapid cost decline and its rapid deployment.

Australia has just 1.5GW of solar PV installed, and the technology is barely discernible on the National Electricity Market. But based on the forecasts released by the Australian Energy Market Operator last week, for up to 18GW of rooftop PV by 2031 (not including utility-scale solar PV or solar thermal), then that graph could look even more dramatic on Australia’s national Electricity Market – particularly considering the size of Australia’s grid, and the fact that our country enjoys twice as good solar resources as Germany.

And as AEMO pointed out, that amount of rooftop solar will not be deployed because of huge government subsidies, or even any at all. It will be deployed because solar PV is emerging as a cheaper source of energy at the socket than grid-based power, and will continue to do so as solar PV prices fall, grid-prices increase, and new financing methods are introduced to make solar PV more widely available.