Germany will likely have greater solar capacity than wind within 10 years, industry experts predicted last week.

Germany has long had large wind-energy capacity. It’s Europe’s largest energy producer.

But it has recently turned to solar and is now the world’s biggest market for solar panels. Much of the growth has come at the hands of significant government subsidies for clean, and specifically solar, energy.

While only a little more than 1 percent of the country’s power now comes from solar source, analysts estimate the current rate of growth in the solar industry will result in Germany getting about a quarter of its power from the sun by 2050.

The German government announced in January that it would discontinue a subsidy program for solar energy production because it will cost the government too much to continue if the industry continues to grow as it has. The subsidy officially ended July 1.

But before the solar incentives and money promises disappeared, applications for solar farms flooded the German Federal network agency offices, according to a report in PVnews.org. Threatened with a looming deadline, those who had thought about creating solar installations rushed to get their applications in.

PVnews reported that the German solar capacity grew by 3 gigawatts in the first half of 2010.

Applications for projects that would generate more than 1.7 GW came in between January and May. Another surge of applications for projects that would generate a total of 50,000 GW came in at the last minute in June, according to the PVnews report.

The growth in the solar industry will likely result in the country’s solar capacity outshining its long admired on- and off-shore wind capacity, according to Bloomberg.

While Germany has put a stop to government subsidies for clean power, the country is expected to spend at least $125 billion over the next 25 years to support the projects its already guaranteed subsidies for.