The revealing, embedded video visualizes the installation of the more than 860,000 solar PV (solar panel) systems installed throughout Germany between January 2009 and January 2013.
The visualization, put together by Chris Davis and Alfredas Chmieliauskas, shows the total installed capacity by location, represented by yellow circles. You’ll notice that there appears to be more solar installations in the Southern part of Germany, Bavaria and Baden-Wurtenberg, where there are higher levels of sunlight per year.
Germany is not known as a very sunny country, yet in comparison to most other countries it has a lot of solar power. In fact, Germany is one of the world’s top solar panel installers, with a solar PV capacity of 35.3 gigawatts in October 2013. A substantial 7.6 gigawatts were installed in 2012 alone. By comparison, a couple of days ago I wrote a post about how very sunny, but coal-heavy Australia has just achieved a total of 3 gigawatts of installed solar power.
Perhaps that is not a fair comparison, as Germany has four times the population of Australia. However, per capita, Germany is the country with the most solar power installed by far, followed by Italy, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Bulgaria, Spain, and Australia. So far, the United States is in 20th position.
Via Reddit
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