- World’s largest solar power plant to be completed in 2010
- 60 other plants now under development
- 100 house-top PV facilities joining power grid every day
Solar power is booming worldwide, with the output from PV (photovoltaic) facilities increasing at 50% + annual rates. Lower Bavaria is the epicenter of the boom. The region has more photovoltaic-based solar power facilities than anywhere else in the world, reports the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The region’s government states that Lower Bavaria is home to no less than a world-best 80 solar parks, in which banks of PV panels are stationed in fields. And this lead is going to get a lot larger over the next year. Over the next twelve months, 60 solar parks will be completed. One of them will be the largest in the world: the €180 million, 190 hectare-large project on the Harthof estate. It will produce 63 MW of electricity a year – enough to meet the needs of 18,000 households.
The park is being developed by the company managing the wealth of the Regensburg-based Thurn und Taxis dynasty, one of Europe’s oldest and most storied families. Several other Lower Bavarian parks will also be among the world’s largest, notably the 52 MW and 20 MW ones in Straßkirchen and Mengkofen. Lower Bavaria’s homeowners are matching the pace set by the region’s developers of solar parks. The number of housetop PV facilities in the region is increasing at an incredible 100-a-day rate – about half of the Bavaria-wide total.
Profit-producing PV panels
Bavarians are highly environmentally minded. But the statewide commitment to protecting the environment is not the prime cause of the boom.
It is, rather, a simple fact. “Solar power is simply the most attractive and secure investment around nowadays,” states energy expert Ludwig Trautmann-Popp. And that’s because of the generous prices guaranteed to be paid over the next 20 years to producers of electricity fed into the public grid – currently 43 cents (house-top facility) and 32 cents (stand-alone facility) per kilowatt. These prices have joined with the 30% drop over the last twelve months in the prices of PV panels and facilities in unleashing the boom.
Source: Invest in Bavaria, Business Bavaria newsletter, Issue 1 2010
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