Solar Energy: The Spanish and German Competition

The solar photovoltaic energy presents itself as one of the most benevolent energies with the environment. The capacity to convert solar light directly into electricity, without emissions of CO2, allows us to visualize a potential solar era to mitigate the global warming.

Nowadays solar energy faces several challenges, the biggest one is decreasing the price per kWh since it is quite high compared to other technologies. According to the ASIF inform each time that the production is doubled the installation cost is reduced in 18%, which means that this issue can be solved by increasing the production of solar photovoltaic energy. Spain and Germany had already started to take measures and they position themselves as the leading countries in the development of solar energy.

Image by http://www.solarbuzz.com

These countries seem to have a competition of who has the largest PV power plant in the world. Germany has a project at Branden where juwi company is installing a 40-megawatt solar power plant using state-of the-art thin-film technology. The juwi group’s philosophy is to produce as quickly as possible solar-generated electricity at competitive prices independently of promotion schemes.

“Within just a few years the price of solar electricity produced on your own rooftop will be cheaper than the power supplied by the energy utilities” says juwi co-founder.

But Spain is striking back, this year a 60 MW solar field is being built in Olmedilla de Alarcón, near Cuenca. The company in charge of this development is NOBESOL, which divided this project in 2 phases: in the first phase they will install 24 MW in a period of 9 months and in the second phase they will install 36 MW in a period of 7 months.

Image by http://www.nobesol.com/

As these countries continue their race to be the world’s leader in production of solar energy other countries seem to be left behind. Maybe is time for more countries to join this promising way of producing energy.