At a reception at the House of Commons February 15, 2011 to mark the occasion,
SOLARWATT’s director of sales and marketing, Detlef Neuhaus, said that the UK market
presented significant and long term opportunities for SOLARWATT: “With the introduction of
a feed-in tariff (FiT) by the government last April, the PV market in the UK is set to grow
enormously in the coming years, as it has in Germany since a FiT was introduced a decade
ago.”
Based in Dresden, SOLARWATT has been operating for 18 years and currently has 480
employees and a turnover of 300 million euros. It has invested over one million euros in a
new automated PV production line in preparation for its entry in to the UK market, and has
just signed an agreement with Enexos in the UK to establish a distribution and installation
network, initially creating 150 jobs.
The company will be targeting the whole PV market from domestic through small scale
commercial, to large scale solar PV farms. It is already in contract negotiations and will be
making some major announcements in the coming months.
The success in Germany could be an indication of what will happen in the UK in the coming
decades. PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that installed capacity in the UK could
reach 1,000MW by 2015, and around 5GW by 2020 – this would bring UK capacity in 2020
to levels reached by Germany today. The majority of UK installations are currently small
domestic ones, usually no larger than 3kW. This is also the case in France and Germany,
while in Spain and Italy, large-scale solar farms are more common.
“The UK has a very long way to go,” continued Detlef Neuhaus. “In 2009, PV installations
totalled 6MW, whereas installations in the USA were 500MW. Both of these pale into
insignificance when compared to Germany which has installed 3,800MW.”
Germany had the fastest-growing PV market between 2006 and 2007, and it is estimated
that more than 8,000MW of PV was installed in the country last year alone. The German PV
industry accounts for over 64,000 jobs in production, distribution and installation, while over
88 per cent of all PV installations in the EU were grid-tied applications in Germany (2006).
The House of Commons reception was preceded by a seminar at the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers for potential distributors and installers.
About SOLARWATT:
SOLARWATT AG located in Dresden is one of Germany’s leading manufacturers of solar modules and a top
supplier of photovoltaic systems. Since its founding in 1993 the company has continuously grown and currently
employs 480 people. In 2010 the company’s turnover was 300 Million Euro. The company’s product line
includes standard modules for solar power plants and building integration (BIPV), small modules as well as
special modules for ambitious architecture. Another section of the business covers the construction of turnkey
projects. The power capacity of the modules ranges from 2 to 320 Watts.
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Stuart