Meet professor sunshine

Eicke Weber is director of Germany’s Fraunhofer Institut fur Solare Energiesysteme (Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems), and professor of physics at the University of Freiburg.

At the institute, he oversees 500 people and a $40m budget funded by government, grants from public sources and projects with industry.

In the U.S., he’s perhaps best known for his 23 years teaching at U.C. Berkeley, where he most recently served as chair of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group. (And where, he points out, he still has a small place.)

His research interests focus on materials science, especially silicon for photovoltaic and microelectronic applications and III/V semiconductor materials. He’s one of the world’s biggest advocates of metallurgical-grade, or ‘dirty’ silicon, for solar applications.

Weber is also an outspoken advocate of Germany’s successful feed-in solar tariff. At a recent event (see the Cleantech Group’s Solar insiders lament lack of U.S. feed-in tariff), he took pleasure in making California solar policy makers squirm, asking pointed questions about why the state’s solar incentives are structured the way they are.

Not missing the chance stir it up further, the Cleantech Group sat down with Weber afterwards.

It sounds like, at least here in California, there’s not going to be any specific interest in a feed-in tariff in the short term. Is that good or bad? And what’s it going to mean?

I think it’s very bad. Only a feed-in tariff gives each individual person who might put PV on the roof a clear incentive to put in solar. The current system, including the California Solar Initiative, has a very complicated support structure.

Specialists and investors who want to make money from this will go through the paperwork and do it. But individuals have a short attention span. They’ll never figure out that it’s worth it. This means that only people who really want to do something good for the environment will be motivated to install a PV system.

The feed in law in Germany, and in Spain, created an explosive solar market. Suddenly, everyone had an interest in getting solar. And it didn’t require a penny of a taxpayer’s money. The cost of the systems are carried by the ratepayers of the utility, and the cost of the ratepayer per Germany is something like the equivalent of 1 and a half dollars a month per household. That’s nothing compared to just the fluctuation of energy prices because of external factors.

The way it works is you simply have a counter of total PV power. It’s not net metering; it’s just metering how much PV you produce. Each kilowatt hour you get a certain amount, let’s say 40 cents. And if you have produced 1,000 kilowatt hours, you get $400 for that month.

With a feed in tariff, there’s no reason not to install solar.

Is solar therefore going to be a relative non-starter here in the U.S.?

The lack of a feed-in law is impeding the rate of growth, no question.

If you’ve seen the numbers we’ve seen for California, it’s absolutely ridiculous. All of California creates 100 MW of new PV power a year. This is the output of just one of the smaller players in the PV field. Right now, one solar company in California, SunPower, makes enough solar cells to meet the whole demand of California.

Germany, which has much more adverse sunshine conditions, is now adding about 1,000 MW a year in newly installed PV power. And Germany is only about twice as large as California. So you see, California is far, far behind.

A feed in law creates jobs in the country. It generates the incentive for PV companies to come to the country, and for solar cells to be produced.