More and more roofs in Germany are being equipped with solar systems.
As the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday, installed capacity in March 2022 rose by 9.7 percent year-on-year to 58,400 megawatts.
According to this, a total of 2.2 million photovoltaic systems converted sunlight into electricity.
Since 2018, when the number was first collected, the number of systems has increased by almost 34 percent and the installed capacity by a good 38 percent.
With the larger number of solar systems, more solar power could also be fed into the grid: In the first quarter of this year, the solar systems produced around 8.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, an increase of almost 35 percent compared to the previous year.
Compared to 2018, there was a significant increase of 64.3 percent.
Overall, solar power accounted for 6.3 percent of total electricity generation in the first quarter of 2022, compared to 4.7 percent in the same period last year.
For private households, however, solar systems were not only a source of electricity but also a source of income: in 2020, around 1.4 million households received income from a solar system, which corresponded to 3.6 percent of all private households.
On average, households earned 174 euros a month, which was significantly less than in 2014, for example;
At that time, the average monthly income was 285 euros.
The reason was the falling feed-in tariff under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
Companies are also making more and more sales with installation and services in the field of photovoltaics: while this amounted to a good 2.5 billion euros in 2016, it rose to a good 3.5 billion euros in 2020.