In Germany: Sunset on solar, and feedback on reforms requested right now

A couple of posts from the German Energy blog today: one on a long awaited draft of a bill to reform the EEG mechanism that spurred growth in renewable energy. It's seen as a very important bill, but the time frame for comments doesn't look very serious.

EEG 2.0: Updated Ministerial Draft for EEG Reform Published – Comments Requested by 2 April 2014 17:00 CET « German Energy Blog:

The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) has today published a new draft bill for a reform of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and circulated the draft to top level municipal and other associations for review and comment. The deadline for comments is 2 April 2014 17:00 CET."
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The extremely short time span to comment of less than two days is challenging (and apparently not an April’s fool day joke). It remains to be seen how much meaningful input can be produced in the given timeframe. Results shall be published.
The Federal Cabinet’s decision on the official draft bill from the government (Regierungsentwurf) is scheduled for 8 April.

The second post on the German Energy blog today indicates declining growth in solar capacity.
Although Ontario copied the German approach to feed-in tariffs, our reporting on solar capacity, generation and cost is extremely poor.  We may have months where we add over 100MWp in 2014.
Germany's forced slow-down in solar growth comes as, after many years of expensive contracting, solar produced only about 5% of all German electricity generation in 2013.

110.414 MWp: New Solar Capacity in February Again Fairly Low

New solar capacity added in February 2014 was again fairly low, amounting to 110.414 MWp, the Federal Network Agency, the German regulator, informed. Total German PV capacity eligible for support under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) amounted to 35,996 MWp at the end of February.
Though February has traditionally not been a strong month for new solar power capacity, only in February 2011 capacity additions were lower than this February (02/2010: 163.280 MWp; 02/2011: 99.710 MWp; 02/2012: 229.919 MWp; 02/2013: 210.402 MWp).