Record bids in German onshore wind tender will spur rollout from next year – regulator

Onshore wind power auctions held in November in Germany have led to a new record in submitted bids, the country’s Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has said. Bidders submitted applications for over six gigawatts (GW), well beyond the four GW the BNetzA had put up for auctioning. “The volume of submitted bids was more than twice as high as the former record volume” and the submitted bids in the latest auction exceeded the total volume submitted in 2023, said agency head Klaus Müller. “This markedly positive trend in bids will translate into significantly more projects entering operation from next year on,” Müller added. The average awarded support in the November auction was 7.15 cents per kilowatt hour, slightly less than in the previous round (7.33 ct/kWh). Most projects were awarded in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, followed by Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the north and Brandenburg in the east. The southern laggard states of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg also saw a clear increase in awarded projects, the agency said.

Already at the end of last week, the BNetzA released figures on the latest auctions for biomass power plants and for roof-mounted solar power, both of which were also oversubscribed. For biomass, the agency received bids with a total volume of 622 megawatts (MW) for an auctioned volume of 234 MW, with most bids coming from operators bidding with existing installations to extend their support payments. For roof-mounted solar power, the agency received 1.7 times more bids than the awarded 258 MW, the highest volume ever. “The new record bids for roof-mounted solar power allow for optimism regarding the technology’s specific expansion path,” BNetzA head Müller commented.

Onshore wind turbine additions are firmly back on a growth track after years of lagging expansion, industry lobby group BWE said earlier this year. Construction permits and licensing were seen as some of the biggest stumbling blocks for the renewable power source's expansion in recent years, but the government coalition under chancellor Olaf Scholz has made a faster approval of new projects a key instrument for its climate and energy policies. Wind power overtook coal as the country’s most important electricity source in 2023.