Another round of tenders to build ground mount PV power plants in Germany has been oversubscribed, with some 562MW of hopefuls entering the bidding for just 200MW of capacity.
This was the third round in a tender process which the European country implemented earlier this year to limit new ground mount installations to 1.2GW over three years. Germany’s regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) said today that 43 bids had been successful, representing 204MW of new capacity. Successful bidders would be informed by email, the agency said.
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In total, 127 bids were received. The tenders were also opened up beyond project developers to allow cooperatives or individuals to take part, Bundesnetzagentur president Jochen Homann said, with two cooperatives among those bidders awarded projects.
The second round in August was oversubscribed three times over, while the first round in April saw 700MW of bids for 150MW of available capacity.
The introduction of the auction process this year has drawn the ire of several groups including German PV trade association BSW Solar. The arbitrary limiting of ground mount solar capacity is an enormous missed opportunity, especially when it can be competitive with “newly built coal-fired plants”, BSW Solar spokesman David Wedepohl told PV Tech in April.