Supply problems inhibit solar boom

Bitterfeld-Wolfen Almost 50 kilometers from Leipzig in the direction of Brandenburg, in the middle of nowhere, the German solar industry is trying to make a comeback. Here in Bitterfeld-Wolfen in Saxony-Anhalt, the module manufacturer Meyer Burger – once one of the first German solar bankruptcies – has been producing more than 300,000 solar cells per day for a little over a year. There could be a lot more.

“The demand far exceeds the supply. We now have to allocate quantities to our customers,” says Meyer Burger boss Gunter Erfurt.

Material bottlenecks, long waiting times or even complete delivery failures have been slowing down the boom in solar power and thus the revival of the industry in this country, which has meanwhile been in crisis, for months. From sensors to plastic tubes for machine controls to semiconductors, the upheavals in global supply chains are currently noticeably hampering the expansion of photovoltaics (PV).