Tried and tested, sadly. Let's hope we don't get that far again.

Back then solar was expensive, so the EEG was meant to promote the emerging tech and make it popular despite the high initial cost, which seemed to have worked. I think SMA is the only company with "solar" in the name that survived the EEG reforms, mostly because they don't produce solar cells.

Oh, they did. And then I remember our economics teacher had us write a homework essay on "why the EEG should be reformed", and few years later, it was reformed, some companies vanished, thousands of jobs were lost and now politicians complain about cheap solar cells from China.

In the 2000s many home owners in Germany rushed to install solar on their roofs because of a government program with fixed prices per kWh produced for small systems; some roofs collapsed because of the rush. Now that the program has been cut (Merkel era), everybody became sceptical of the "new" tech