German solar tender twice oversubscribed, average price 5 ct/kWh
Clean Energy Wire
Germany registered strong demand in its latest tenders for solar energy projects. Total bids for large-scale open area arrays added up to a capacity of 1,130 megawatts (MW), more than twice the auction volume of 510 MW, the country's grid agency BNetzA said. Successful bid prices ranged from 4.69 to 5.09 cents per kilowatt-hour (ct/kWh) and averaged 5.00 ct/kWh, slightly below the average price in the previous auction of 5.03 ct/kWh.
In its first auction for solar arrays with a capacity of more than 300 kilowatts on buildings or noise protection walls, investors offered to build installations with a combined capacity of 213 MW, compared to an auction volume of 150 MW. In this auction, prices ranged from 5.35 to 7.89 ct/kWh, with an average of 6.88 ct/kWh.
Solar PV remains a major cornerstone of the country’s energy transition. While Germany is currently seeing a major boost in residential PV installations, industry representatives are now calling for the country’s solar target to be raised from 100 to 150 gigawatts by 2030. At the same time, amendments to the renewables levy (EEG) are expected to encourage greater self-consumption of solar power as many early PV projects lose their guaranteed feed-in tariffs after 20 years.
