Germany Installed 2 GW of Solar PV in Q4 2011 — The U.S. Installed 1.7 GW in All of 2011

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/10/401882/germany-installed-2-gw-of-solar-pv-in-the-month-of-december/

By Stephen Lacey on Jan 10, 2012 at 3:47 pm

In the lead up to another 15% reduction in Germany’s feed-in tariff (the price paid for solar electricity fed into the grid), the German solar industry finished 2011 off with a bang — installing 2,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic systems in the fourth quarter.

Let’s put those figures in perspective: In just three months, Germany installed 300 more megawatts of solar than the entire U.S. developed during all of 2011. Germany ended the year with almost 7,000 MW of installations; the U.S. ended up with about 1,700 megawatts, according to GTM Research.

Oh, and I should probably mention that the Germans installed all of that solar at almost half the price. The average price of an installed solar system in Germany came to $2.80 in the third quarter of 2011. In the U.S., it was about $5.20 in the third quarter.

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