BERLIN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- Germany's photovoltaic (PV) share in electricity generation reached a record high of 12 percent last year, as more companies and private households turn to solar energy, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported Monday.
In April, approximately 3.4 million PV systems were installed in Germany, marking a 30 percent increase within a year. These figures excluded smaller units for private use. Additionally, installed output rose more than 20 percent to 81.5 gigawatts (GW), according to Destatis.
Despite this expansion, Germany reported a two-thirds drop in the value of PV systems imports year-on-year in the first five months. David Wedepohl, general director of International Affairs at the German Solar Association, told Xinhua that this decline "could be a result of companies reducing stock."
Wedepohl noted that China remains Germany's most important supplier of materials for the PV sector. According to Destatis, PV systems worth 3.6 billion euros (3.9 billion U.S. dollars) were imported into Germany last year, with 86.4 percent of imports coming from China.
In the first half of this year, growth in Germany's PV sectors was driven by power plants built on open land and company roofs, Wedepohl added.
The German government aims to set a 215 GW solar power expansion target by 2030. It recently adopted measures to reduce bureaucracy, improve land provision, and simplify the registration of so-called balcony power plants on private residences.
These small-scale units are "selling like hotcakes because it is an investment where people can directly see that they can do something themselves and benefit from it," Germany's Economics Minister Robert Habeck said earlier this month. (1 euro = 1.08 U.S. dollar)
