With so much sunshine in Greece one wonders what is being done by the 'elites' for the good of their country; meanwhile others are busy making things happen instead of making excuses...

Germany’s $263 Billion Renewables Shift Biggest Since War, By Stefan Nicola - Mar 19, 2012 5:34 AM MT, Bloomberg News

Not since the allies leveled Germany in World War II has Europe’s biggest economy undertaken a reconstruction of its energy market on this scale.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to build offshore wind farms that will cover an area six times the size of New York City and erect power lines that could stretch from London to Baghdad. The program will cost 200 billion euros ($263 billion), about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011, according to the DIW economic institute in Berlin.

Germany aims to replace 17 nuclear reactors that supplied about a fifth of its electricity with renewables such as solar and wind. Merkel to succeed must experiment with untested systems and policies and overcome technical hurdles threatening the project, said Stephan Reimelt, chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE)’s energy unit in the country.

Utilities running gas-generating plants in Germany lost 10.92 euros a megawatt-hour today at 12:16 p.m. local time, based on so-called clean-spark spreads for the next month that take account of gas, power and emissions prices. That compared with a profit of 20.95 euros in October 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.K. generators earned 2.06 pounds ($3.27), down from a profit of 7.02 pounds in October.
A gigawatt is about enough to supply 800,000 homes in the U.S. and a bit less than the capacity of a nuclear reactor.
Germany’s efforts in the industry are sending shocks through European power markets. When it’s windy and sunny, turbines and solar cells flood the grid with electricity, undermining the economics of natural-gas fired generators, since clean energy has supply priority over fossil fuels.

Utilities running gas generating plants in Germany lost 10.92 euros a megawatt-hour today at 12:16 p.m. local time, based on so-called clean-spark spreads for the next month that take account of gas, power and emissions prices. That compared with a profit of 20.95 euros in October 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.K. generators earned 2.06 pounds ($3.27), down from a profit of 7.02 pounds in October.
Norbert Roettgen, the 46-year-old lawyer who is Merkel’s environment minister and protege, is managing the transition and aims for the nation to generate at least 35 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, up from 20 percent last year.

Roettgen seeks 25,000 megawatts of power generated by wind farms in the North Sea and Baltic Sea by 2030, about the same as 25 nuclear power stations. About 200 megawatts of offshore wind plants are working now.
Already, Germany has built the world’s biggest renewable generation complex, with 53.8 gigawatts of wind and solar generators at the end of last year. Italy last year added a record 9 gigawatts of solar panels, overtaking Germany for the first time. The U.K. plans 18 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2020, up from 1,500 megawatts now.

Some of Germany’s biggest companies are entering the renewables business and backing the innovations needed to make expand the scale of the industry.
Solar’s 80% Plunge Hurts Utilities From Hawaii to Spain, By Ben Sills and Marc Roca - Mar 20, 2012 6:00 PM MT, Bloomberg News

On grassy pasture in western Spain, Fotowatio SL is preparing to build a solar plant to supply electricity 25 percent cheaper than a local utility charges for traditional power, a breakthrough that’s sending tremors through the global energy industry.
Solar panels costs have tumbled 80 percent in the past five years. A technology that in the 1970s was so expensive it only made economic sense for satellites and offshore drilling rigs is today a $100 billion industry that’s transforming the world’s power supply in the same way semiconductor efficiencies put personal computers everywhere, changing the way information flows.
Panel makers such as Baoding, China-based Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. are themselves feeling the strain of crushed margins. The Bloomberg Global Large Solar Energy index, led by Chinese PV panel maker Hanwha SolarOne Co., erased 68 percent of its market value in 2011. At the same time, annual installations jumped 49 percent to about 28 gigawatts.

Twelve of the index’s 17 members will lose money in 2012, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Yingli saw its gross margin reduced to 3 percent in the fourth quarter compared with 11 percent in the preceding three months and lost $510 million in 2011.

The competition is hurting suppliers as it helps the industry accelerate toward so-called retail grid parity, when homes and businesses will be able to generate their own power more cheaply than they buy it from coal- or gas-fired plants through local utilities.
Not every industry observer believes grid parity is around the corner.

Gordon Johnson of Axiom Capital Management Inc., the top- ranked solar-energy analyst of more than 30 tracked by Bloomberg, says the financial strain on panel makers reflects fundamental problems with their business rather than pressure from competitors.

There’s a limit to how much the cost of solar energy can fall because some components -- the racks, cables and inverters that make the power compatible with utility grids -- are not declining as fast and because PV requires backup from conventional plants during the night, he said.